#159 Blog Post - Tuesday, 14 June 2022

 http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2022/06/159-disclaimers.html

Posted by Denny Hatch

The Nutty Business
Of Legal Disclaimers

Announcing: "The Blaux Portable Bidet"

A serial prowler of the Internet  I stumbled across the above little adsomewhere and was immediately intrigued. I went to the website and downloaded allthe copy and design.

The $49 "Blaux Portable Bidet" is akind of water pistol designed to replace old fashioned toilet paper.

What a strange name for a product! I thought.For starters, only 12% of bathrooms in homes and hotels in United States are equippedwith a bidet.

Yeah, these bathroom fixtures are all over Europe.  But to a huge percentage of Americans, the word bidet (Is it pronounced"by-dette"?) is meaningless.

I skimmed the features and benefits, foundthe entire proposition to be nose-wrinkling unpleasant and was about to delete everythingand move on to some other subject...

... when I came across the mostextraordinary disclaimer statement in the history of advertising.

Copyright © 2022 AllRights Reserved.

Privacy Policy | Terms of Use

This is anadvertisement and not an actual news article, blog, or consumer protectionupdate.

The story depicted onthis site and the person depicted in the story are not actual news. Rather,this story is based on the results that some people who have used theseproducts have achieved. The results portrayed in the story and in the commentsare illustrative and may not be the results that you achieve with theseproducts. This page could receive compensation for clicks on or purchase ofproducts featured on this site.

All product and companynames are trademarks™ or registered® trademarks of their respective holders.Unless specifically identified as such, our use of third-party trademarks doesnot indicate any relationship, sponsorship, or endorsement between strongcurrent and the owners of these trademarks. Any references by us to third partytrademarks are to identify the corresponding third-party goods and/or servicesand fall under nominative fair use under the trademark law.

Testimonials appearingon this site individual real-life experiences of those who have used ourproducts and/or services in some way or another. The testimonials arevoluntarily provided with no compensation. The results are not typical and arenot necessarily representative of all of those who will use our products and/orservices. They cannot be guaranteed. Before and after photos were not retouchedor altered. Results were self-reported by the customer and therefore cannot beconfirmed. Ourcompany is not responsible for any of the opinions or comments posted on oursite.

 Don't squint. Here's thatlast line in readable type:

"Our company is notresponsible for
any of the opinions or comments
posted on our site."

Holy smokes! In 60 years of direct marketing — as a copywriter,publisher, editor-in-chief, ad salesman, and reporter — I had never evercome across such a "Blanket Disclaimer."

What this unbelievable message is really saying: "These 16 wordshereby give the perpetrators of this website full license to lie, cheat andsteal."

In plain English: "Don't waste your time. Everything youread here is probably B.S."

• For the full story of Blaux Portable Bidetonline promotion, here is the link.

About "Promises"Made by Advertisers

Okay, copywriters andagency creative directors can get carried away dreaming up features andbenefits. If the smartypants creatives are not reined in, the advertiser can land in Big Trouble —with a capital B and a capital T — with the Federal Trade Commission.

An example is the "Pump-'n'-DumpIndustry.

At a DirectMarketing Association convention exhibit hall long ago I bumped into a copywriter I had known for 30years and asked what he was up to.

 “I specialize in pump-'n'-dump.”

“Huh?”

“If youneed capital for your company, I can help you pump up the price of your penny stockand then you can dump it on the marketand it will be snapped up by speculators.

Here a classic "Pump-'n'-Dumpdirect mail outer envelope received in the WHO'S MAILING WHAT! archive on Jan. 24,2012:

Below is the lingo for thegeneric legal Disclaimer that makes Pump-'n'-Dump promises allowable. Disclaimers are usually found in 8-point graymousetype—hard as hell to read and easy peasy to ignore by greedy suckers visualizingobscene 813% profits.

Revered Corporations Hide Behind Disclaimers:
Large Print on United Airlines/Chase Envelope

Below:United Airlines/Chase Disclaimer Document

Let's parse these exclusions/disclaimers from my book, Write Everything Right! 

What’sgoing on is a textbook example of how lawyers and complicit marketers can comeup with a way to tell customers and prospects they can be screwed withabsolutely no recourse. This stuff is typical of the entire financial servicesindustry. The trick: make it so impossibly difficult to comprehend nobody will botherto read the thing.

A final note about financialservices marketing

The word “services” (as in“financial services”) reminds me of a story told by the late Barry Gray, themellifluous-voiced fixture on New York talk radio for 50 years.

     WhenRogers was 10 years old, he was sitting on the split-rail fence of his family’s400-acre spread located on the shore of Lake Oologah, Oklahoma. He looked upand saw an immense, blue-ribbon-prize bull from the adjoining ranch being ledacross his property. Its destination was the adjacent ranch where he wasscheduled to service a prize heifer.

     “Sincethen, every time I hear the word ‘service,’” Rogers said years later, “I knowsomebody is going to get screwed.”

If you want to obfuscate, here are therules to break

•“Column Width: 35 to55 characters is a good target range for optimum comprehension. Ten or eleven point type is generally most readable on a column width ofabout a third of a page.” —Ed Elliott

         (Note:The columns in the UAL-Chase disclaimer are 190 characters wide.)

•“Type smaller than 9-point is difficult for most people to read.” —David Ogilvy

         (Note:The Chase/UA disclaimer copy is 7-point.)

• Wantto make copy tough to read? Create gray walls of type set it in gray sans seriftype. The lighter the gray the more impossible to read.

Takeaways to Consider

• "Avoid gray walls of type." —David OBILVY.

•"Direct mail [direct marketing] should be scrupulously honest." —DickBenson

•"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away."
— Tom Waits

• "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
    —William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part II, Act IV, Scene 2

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