The other day while working, I noticed a local service vehicle, a plumber or carpenter or some other type of local day service provider that caimed to be the “BEST,” of whatever serice they provided. I live in a fairly heavily populated Metro area so there must be hundreds or even thousands of these business’ located here, and more than one claim to be the “BEST.” What I would like to know is claiming to be the best at providing a service, and actually having that term painted on your vehicle as part of the logo false advertising?
Also would you invite a company that blatently (sp?) lies to come in your home to do work ? 
You’d have to prove the false advertising by exhaustive testing of all other service providers in the area.
What’s this got to do with evolution?
Hey, it prompted me to open the thread, whereas I might’ve passed on one titled “Question regarding hyperbole in local service advertising”.
True … makes a change from the double entendres, I guess. 
Ice Wolf
The evolution of advertising :dubious: from simply stating the atributes (sp?) of your product or service to why you can’t live or shouldn’t live without our product?
Simply; making a sweeping statement claiming that my product or service is the best in any given field is false, therefore isn’t that false advertising?
The other part of my post may not-infact doesn’t- have a factual answer, I just wondered how one feels about inviting someone into their home to do somekind of work knowing that basically they , or the owners of the company are, to be kind, not purveyors of the truth.
The best is a subjective term.
I can claim to be the best rugby player, because so far in my career I’ve never dropped the ball (true story). However, I’ve never scored a try.
Legally, claiming to be the best is fine, but you’ll probably need a reason or people won’t believe you. Its not false advertising, because you can’t measure it, thus no one is ever ‘the best’.
Usually firms around my area claim to be the best by having an award; my local hairdresser is the ‘best’ because it got ‘best hairdresser 2004’.
Okay, NadaHappyCamper - you may have had in mind while composing your OP that it was about “the evolution of advertising”, but that isn’t really clear from your OP.
It’s a bit of a stretch linking “evolution” as a concept with “are they allowed to call themselves the best plumbers?” anyway.
it helps to have desriptive titles.
I’ve changed the tilte for you.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator
Claims like being the best plumber or having the world’s greatest cheeseburger or the like are legally known as “puffery”. Puffery claims are considered to be subjective opinions rather than objective facts that need to be proved, which makes them perfectly legal.
I work at a motel, and there is a motel across the street that is a part of the same chain. Their sign says “The Best Rates.” You’d be surprised how many people walk in to my motel, look out the window and see the sign, and say “Oh honey look, they’ve got the best rates over there- let’s go.” This is funny, because all motel rates are essentially random and arbitrary. Me and the desk clerk over there joke that they offer kind of the cosmically best rate- which may well be $599 a night. They never said the cheapest, after all, only the best…
I’m not sure of my source on this, but it was some advertising text.
It stated that in the advertising world, the term BEST had a legal meaning that basically meant “equally as good as all the other guys,” whereas BETTER meant “superior to.”
Therefore, Crest and Colgate toothpastes could each be advertised as being BEST, but if Crest said it was BETTER than Colgate, it had to have verifiable proof of superiority.
I, however, have no verifiable proof that this is actually the case.