I just got off a phone call with our account rep manager and the sales department. The purpose of the call was to determine which if two phrases to use in our sales documents. I was there in the role of our compliance department.
Near the end of the call I said we met the legal definition of one and from what I could tell the other phrase would be puffery.
The account rep manager responded with “Ok great then we’ll change the copy away from (the puffery phrase)”
We ended the call and now I’m starting to wonder if she misunderstood me and thought I was saying that the second phrase was bad for some reason. I’ve reached out to her directly in email to clarify but I wanted to check with the Dope as well.
Do you know what puffery is and would you be confused by how I used it in the above conversation?
I know the term “puffery,” and its definition, quite well, but I’ve spent my career working in marketing and advertising, so I’m not your general layman.
I know it, and first learned it in Mass Media Law in undergrad. I would not be confused by how you used it, and it looks like your colleague was, confused, at least in that moment.
I don’t know what the legal definition is. I would take it to mean ‘exaggerated claims about the product.’ If, as a person seeing an ad, I said something in it was ‘puffery’, I would not be giving a compliment.
I know it but I also first learned it in Mass Media Law in undergrad. I understood what you said but I might also interpret it as “one is more solid so let’s go with that one.”
I do know what puffery is, and I guess the decision would depend on the context. It seems that since you were acting in terms of a compliance they should have taken it to mean that you were okaying it, but I could also see the point of view where they would want to avoid the appearance of common weasel phrasing and so would want to go with the more solid phrasing even if it is more legally specific.
I hadn’t thought of this interpretation so I’m glad I started this thread. She may have just prefered to go with something solid with an FDA definition behind the claim rather than the nebulous phrase.
It does seem that puffery isn’t universal so I’ll have to make sure to be more clear next time too.
I just tried looking up the legal definition, because I didn’t know it, and got this from wikipedia:
In everyday language, puffery refers to exaggerated or false praise.[1] In law, puffery is a promotional statement or claim that expresses subjective rather than objective views, which no “reasonable person” would take literally.
That reads to me as if it’s legally permissible because of the sense that I knew it in – that is, it’s legally permissible because it’s clearly so exaggerated that nobody could be expected to take it literally.
Yep, that’s it. Basically we were debating between a phrase that has a legal definition but 99% of our competitors can use too or a phrase that sounds good but means nothing that most likely is unique to us.
I don’t really care which we use just as long as we sell enough product to pay the bills but I don’t want our marketing group to stick to only things with a legal definition like Organic vs something like All Natural which is meaningless if they think all natural will sell more.
Well, not exactly. It’s more tied to the subjective nature of the claim. It isn’t stating fact. Our brand is the best = puffery. Our brand of detergent is better than brand X at getting grass stains out = you need some studies to back that up. It isn’t based on it being false or exaggerated.
I work with marketing teams where my primary role is to ensure compliance and the above was my initial reaction, too. But having thought about it some more, and read the rest of the thread, I remembered other occasions where I have seen something and thought it was OK to use on the basis that it was obviously puffery - i.e. a claim so obviously subjective that there would be no need or point to asking for evidence to back it up. But that’s not usually something my organisation would do. Then again, in my industry the marketing of products is fairly tightly regulated and my firm is probably towards the more conservative end (then again, like you, even in a compliance role we don’t like to restrict the creativity of our marketing department unnecessarily).
Anyway, all that is a long way of saying that I can see why the person you were speaking with appeared to interpret your response rather differently from what you apparently intended. Good on you for swiftly recognising the disconnect and moving to clarify it.
Exactly so. I’ve worked in industries where nearly everything that’s said in ads is essentially puffery – either because other sorts of claims would require evidence that would be expensive (or, sometimes, simply impossible to get) that would hold up if the claim was challenged, or because legally-defined terms aren’t meaningful or interesting to the consumer. “Gives your hair body,” “tastes great,” “kids love it,” “gives long-lasting protection against underarm odor” – all puffery.
On the other hand, over the course of my career, I’ve been asked to take a look at conducting market research studies that could be used for “claims substantiation” at least a dozen times. Such a study is extremely specialized, but is something that any marketer’s legal counsel will advise them is necessary if they want to make a marketing claim along the lines of “People prefer the taste of Brand X over Brand Y.” (If you’re Brand X, and you start making that claim in your advertising, you can absolutely count on Brand Y’s legal counsel immediately filing a complaint against you with the Federal Trade Commission.)
The FTC (which is typically the arbiter of whether such a claim has been substantiated) doesn’t give actual guidelines as to “you must do this kind of research,” but the specifics behind research methodologies which have held up to scrutiny have been pretty well-documented. Such a study can be expected to cost in the low six figures, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll get the results you’re hoping for (i.e., there’s no guarantee that, at the end of the study, it’ll be conclusive enough that you’ll be on solid legal ground for your claim).
Anyway, I’ve been asked to provide specifics on how to do such a study at least a dozen times in my career. I have not ever actually conducted such a study, nor have I seen such a study done – once the clients see what it takes to be able to support such a claim, the reply is invariably, “oh, never mind, then.” And, thus, we wind up with puffery in advertising.
The example I remember (and I still don’t remember what sort of class I’d have taken in engineering school would have covered this… Econ?) is “Coldest beer in town.” No one has and no one wants a block of beer ice chilled by liquid oxygen. It’s just puffery.
I know what it means. It’s covered in all kinds of introductory law and marketing and business studies texts. Anybody who paid any kind of attention to the world would know what it means. Which is … almost nobody.
I’m simultaneously perplexed that people can get to adulthood without knowing that ‘mere puffery’ is unrestricted, and perplexed that my expectations about people are so unrealistic.
There is a great deal to the world that has nothing to do with law, marketing, or business studies texts.
I could go around being perplexed that so many people don’t know, say, that herbicides are pesticides. But I don’t, because I realize there’s more to be known than fits in any one person’s head, and I realize that different people know different things.
Puffery is a pejorative, it means “bullshit.” So you may not have intended it strictly as legal advice, but you WERE basically saying that the 2nd phrase was bad, or at least worse than the 1st.
I think pretty much anybody would take it that way.
It has 2 meanings. How to take what the OP said depends on which meaning you took from the word. One of them is not pejorative in the context of that discussion.