Basecamp is a web-based tool that lets you manage and track projects (or simply ideas) and quickly create client/project extranets.

“NO RISK FREE TRIAL?” I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me. But this thing is making me bug out. Maybe its the handful of hours I spent doing ads with this kinda copy/text on it. I know them marketers are really crucial in wording their babies.

I mean, “Content is king” to them. Even if it looks out of place, or out of proportion, they don’t care where it goes as long as its big and right on the audiences’ face. Other than that, they just churn their rolodex and make calls to their contacts. I guess its all about the commission—they get bank.

Meanwhile, back to the word-play in the Basecamp ad. I saw this ad in a site I frequent for design news and other stuff. It didn’t hit me at first till I took a closer look at it. I couldn’t just shake it off, you know?

Its like having the TP on backwards so that it wouldn’t “waterfall” the right way. I just hate seeing it anywhere that I literally change it the way it should’ve been in the first place. Just a pet peeve of mine amongst other small stuff. Anyone else have this on their list?

Anyways, I got a couple of things when I saw this copy: “NO RISK FREE TRIAL.” First, it can mean “NO RISK-FREE TRIAL”—which sounds really evil. Its like, try our product that I’m selling and oh BTW, if you get some growth on your neck we’re not to blame. I mean c’mon, just a major sales deterrent that can just close a business out.

The second meaning that I get sounds right. “NO-RISK FREE TRIAL.” Sounds better don’t it? Not only are you getting a free trial, there’s also no-risk to doing it. Two major selling point that can bring the dough from rolling in.

I guess it was just an oversight by someone over at the Marketing department. With the successful products that 37Signals have been rolling out lately (i.e. Basecamp, Backpack and Ta-da List) to complement the next version of the Web (aka. Web 2.0), this might just have been a freak of nature. Either that, or the designer just did his/her thing—design. I probably have done something like this in that past, to make things look “right”. After all, “beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.”