Puffery
Introduction
According to the Legal Dictionary, puffery is a form of advertising in which a product or service is praised as being superior to all others like it, without any evidence to back up the claim. This is done for the sole purpose of attracting buyers that might not otherwise give the product or service any attention.
Puffery can normally be found in advertising or promotional materials about a specific product or service, though it is often employed by politicians and other people attempting to gain favor. Puffery is legal, so long as it does not escalate to what would be considered misrepresentation. For example, undeserved or exaggerated praise; publicity consisting of such praise and others.
What is puffery?
Puffery is a statement or claim that is promotional in nature. It’s usually subjective and not to be taken seriously. Advertisers try to persuade people to buy a product or service through various methods. A company may deliver an entertaining message about its product, compare the product to a similar item, list facts about the product, or make vague claims about the product that cannot be proved or disproved. This last method is known as “puffery”; the advertiser “puffs up” the product to seem like more than it is.
Puffery is not illegal and is a common method used in advertising. Examples of these include claiming that one’s product is the “best in the world” or something completely unbelievable, like a product claiming to make you feel like you’re in space. For example:
Duracell
We all know that a toy rabbit powered by a Duracell battery will not keep going and going and going. Even if puffery’s only function is to entertain, that would be sufficient reason not to discourage it.
Fevicol (“Fevicol ka mazboot jod hai Tootega nahi!” by Fevicol)
The impact of puffery advertisement on the audience is as follows:
Consumers tend to buy the product on the basis of puffed-up ads but at times end up being dissatisfied. The product does not live up to their expectations.
At times, puffery has a negative impact on the consumers, where instead of being brand loyal, they end up being brand averse.
Some other examples of ‘puffery’ in advertising:
- “Red Bull Gives You Wings”
- “Feels like you’re sleeping on a cloud.”
- “It’s a meal fit for a king.”
- “It’ll blow your mind.”
- “World’s best coffee.”
The above slogans are all ‘puffery’; we don’t know what it’s like to sleep on a cloud. Who knows what a meal fit for a king is? “Blow your mind” is obviously not to be taken literally, and there is no way of substantiating if you’re serving the world’s best coffee.
Puffery enables an advertiser to grab consumers by their collars and say, “Hey, have I got a great product for you!” If firms are discouraged from placing in their ads all but the driest factual claims, consumers will be forced to spend more of their time and resources discovering which products are available.
One consequence will be diminished product innovation. Because consumers are more familiar with established products than with new products, puffery is pivotal to the marketing of new products. Fewer resources will be devoted to product innovation if firms encounter greater legal risks in bringing new products to consumers’ attention. Established products experience less intense competition as fewer products enter the market. Product quality declines.
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