#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 ad somewhere and was immediately intrigued. I went to the website and downloaded all the copy and design.
The $49 "Blaux Portable Bidet" is a kind 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 equipped with 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, found
the entire proposition to be nose-wrinkling unpleasant and was about to delete everything
and move on to some other subject...
... when I came across the most extraordinary disclaimer statement in the history of advertising.
Copyright © 2022 All Rights Reserved.
This is an advertisement and not an actual news article, blog, or consumer protection update.
The story depicted on this 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 these products have achieved. The results portrayed in the story and in the comments are illustrative and may not be the results that you achieve with these products. This page could receive compensation for clicks on or purchase of products featured on this site.
All product and company names are trademarks™ or registered® trademarks of their respective holders. Unless specifically identified as such, our use of third-party trademarks does not indicate any relationship, sponsorship, or endorsement between strong current and the owners of these trademarks. Any references by us to third party trademarks are to identify the corresponding third-party goods and/or services and fall under nominative fair use under the trademark law.
Testimonials appearing on this site individual real-life experiences of those who have used our products and/or services in some way or another. The testimonials are voluntarily provided with no compensation. The results are not typical and are not necessarily representative of all of those who will use our products and/or services. They cannot be guaranteed. Before and after photos were not retouched or altered. Results were self-reported by the customer and therefore cannot be confirmed. Our company is not responsible for any of the opinions or comments posted on our site.
Don't squint. Here's that last line in readable type:
"Our company is not
responsible 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 ever come across such a "Blanket Disclaimer."
What this unbelievable message is really saying: "These 16 words hereby give the perpetrators of this website full license to lie, cheat and steal."
In plain English: "Don't waste your time. Everything you read here is probably B.S."
• For the full story of Blaux Portable Bidet online promotion, here is the link.
About "Promises" Made by Advertisers
Okay, copywriters and agency creative directors can get carried away dreaming up features and benefits. 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'-Dump Industry.
At a Direct Marketing Association convention exhibit hall long ago I bumped into a copywriter I had known for 30 years and asked what he was up to.
“I specialize in pump-'n'-dump.”
“Huh?”
“If you need capital for your company, I can help you pump up the price of your penny stock and then you can dump it on the market and it will be snapped up by speculators.
Here a classic "Pump-'n'-Dump direct mail outer envelope received in the WHO'S MAILING WHAT! archive on Jan. 24, 2012:
Below is the lingo for the generic legal Disclaimer that makes Pump-'n'-Dump promises allowable. Disclaimers are usually found in 8-point gray mousetype—hard as hell to read and easy peasy to ignore by greedy suckers visualizing obscene 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’s going on is a textbook example of how lawyers and complicit marketers can come up with a way to tell customers and prospects they can be screwed with absolutely no recourse. This stuff is typical of the entire financial services industry. The trick: make it so impossibly difficult to comprehend nobody will bother to read the thing.
A final note about financial services marketing
The word “services” (as in “financial services”) reminds me of a story told by the late Barry Gray, the mellifluous-voiced fixture on New York talk radio for 50 years.
On a late-night broadcast, Gray did a riff on the boyhood of the great American humorist, trick rope artist and Ziegfeld Follies star Will Rogers and the meaning of the word “service.”When Rogers was 10 years old, he was sitting on the split-rail fence of his family’s 400-acre spread located on the shore of Lake Oologah, Oklahoma. He looked up and saw an immense, blue-ribbon-prize bull from the adjoining ranch being led across his property. Its destination was the adjacent ranch where he was scheduled to service a prize heifer.
“Since then, every time I hear the word ‘service,’” Rogers said years later, “I know somebody is going to get screwed.”
If you want to obfuscate, here are the rules to break
• “Column Width: 35 to 55 characters is a good target range for optimum comprehension. Ten or eleven point type is generally most readable on a column width of about 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 8-point.)
• Want to make copy tough to read? Create gray walls of type set it in gray sans serif type. The lighter the gray the more impossible to read.
Takeaways to Consider
• "Avoid gray walls of type." —David Ogilvy.
• "Direct mail [direct marketing] should be scrupulously honest." —Dick Benson
•
"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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215-644-9526 (rings on my desk).
I believe it's pronounced bee-day. (We Bronx boys do get some education, you know.)
ReplyDeleteDoug, Thanks for writing. I was being facetious.
DeleteDo keep in touch.
Cheers!
Over several years of subscribing to different copywriters to learn from them on direct mailing, I'm starting to see more of them selling their own products and service at a high price. That is why I enjoy your post so much that gives us real examples of what we are seeing in adverting today. Waiting for your next post. Thank You
ReplyDeleteMark, Many thanks for your encouraging words.
DeleteFor the record, I do take on occasional clients.
Do keep in touch!
From long-time subscriber/reader Jeffrey Dobkin:
ReplyDeleteTue, Jun 14 at 10:34 AM
Hey, Y’all…
Enjoyed your last column about disclaimers.
I wrote a contract years ago for the sale of my mailing list, and since then published it my book, “How To Market A Product For Under $500!”
It followed your guidelines of creating a document no one would read.
It was a full page entitled “Standard List Rental Contract” which of course I made up. It ran 2 columns, set in Helvetica Narrow, all caps - 11 point on an 10 point leading. Not even my typesetter could proof it...
It was written in mumbo jumbo legalese, with lots of why’s and wherefores sprinkled with a few therefore’s…
A whole page of gibberish except for a paragraph found - if you could read the whole thing - about 3/4 of the way through the copy, which stated something like: If you abuse our list we reserve the right to sue you, collect lawyers fees, travel expenses and hotel accommodations if we sue you and win.
When someone mailed to our list a second or third time without payment, I sent them a note they owed us money for the additional list rental. I pointed to the contract they signed when renting the list. I also mentioned our lawyers and myself loved to travel first class - which they would have pay for, and by the way we’ve never lost a case - which was true.
We actually never went to court. Everyone paid after receiving the letter.
Please feel free to publish this aside to your article.
Best,
Jeffrey Dobkin
Love it, Jeffrey! Thank you, thank you!!!
DeleteGood afternoon, Denny!
ReplyDeleteAnother typographic peculiarity lawyers are fond of is insisting that certain statements – sometimes paragraph after paragraph of them – be set in ALL CAPS. Someone in law school has told them this will get attention and be read. They also like sentences as long as paragraphs, and paragraphs as long as pages.
In TV commercials, they have no problem insisting on mouse type across the bottom of the screen that says something totally different from what the announcer is saying on the track.
Keep up the good work!
Best regards!
Tim Orr
Tim,
ReplyDeleteThanks as always for taking the time to comment.
I had forgotten about ALL CAPS as a tough-to-read gimmick.
My opinion: the three greatest villains in screwing up communications are:
1. Lawyers.
2. Designers.
3. Their bosses who don't know squat about communications.
This post was about lawyers and disclaimers.
Many of my posts are about designers. They go for "pretty" and "arty" rather than readability. They drive me nuts.
And finally, the bosses. With the explosion of the Internet and digital communications in the 80s, 90s and beyond, people with no experience, who had never been mentored in anything were hired. They don't operate on knowledge and proven rules. THey go by their "gut."They in turn moved up the ladder and hired others. Who hired more.
We live in a world of fleas as in Dean Swift's poem:
Greater fleas have lesser fleas
Upon their back to bite 'em.
Lesser fleas have little fleas,
And so, ad infinitum.
My advice: never stop mentoring!
And do keep in touch!
Cheers.