One of my pet peeves is misleading advertising.
In some cases it’s a matter of reading the fine print.
In other cases it’s simply a matter of the advertiser “chancing their arm”.
At present this site, and several others I run, are displaying adds from a particular company that claim to offer “the best”, “the cheapest” etc., etc.
Of course they don’t, but it does make you wonder about people’s buying decisions. Are they really influenced by a company’s own claims?
Should companies sell themselves as being the “best” etc?
Michele Neylon :: Pensieri
Technology, Marketing, Domains, Thoughts
This is as old as the hills in Great Britain (please savour this pub laden comment)
A company can obviously claim that their product is the ‘cheapest’, ‘fastest’, ‘safest’, etc. if it demonstrably is. ‘Best’ is really a subjective claim, so anyone can make it. “I think that my product is the best because the flames it produces when it catches fire are a far prettier colour than the competition”, for instance.
Note that all rules break down when advertising cosmetics; cosmetics manufacturers are seemingly permitted to make absolutely outrageous, insane claims.
Reminds me of the time I found out the year a certain maker of “award winning” sausages won that award. It was when? 1932 or thereabouts…
Robert – exactly my feeling. We can argue until the “cows come home” about subjective terms, but “cheapest” is not subjective
Chris – at least they actually won an award at some point. There are some companies advertising stuff both online and offline that use very dubious taglines
Michele