There are lies, damnable lies, and then there is puffery. This is true in all manner of advertising, and in all types of transactions.
As far back as the early 1600s (Shakespeare's day), the doctrine of caveat emptor existed. "Caveat Emptor" means "Buyer Beware". In law, there is an assumption that the populace is not made up of entirely gullible folk, and that there is a responsibility on the part of the buyer before buying a bill of goods or a pig in a poke, to do some research, and to accept whatever the seller says with a grain of salt.
My goodness, what a lot of idioms!
In discussion of the historical background of "puffery", advertising and marketing expert Barry M. Benjamin tells the tale of a superstitious man with a medical problem of some sort, who bought a so-called "magic rock". This was in 1603. If the transaction had been in America, after the 1800s, the vendor might have been dubbed a snake oil salesman, except of course, he was selling the hard stuff (rock pun).
The man whose symptoms were not alleviated by ownership of the magical stone decided to sue the purveyor to get his money back. Whatever the salesman could have been proven to have said, the court of the day found that it was entertaining patter, perhaps much exaggerated, but not so blatantly deceitful that a reasonable person would have swallowed it hook line and sinker.
'Tis the season for a great quantity of exaggeration in advertising. As legal blogger Barry M. Benjamin writes for the law firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP,
"All advertising is intended to persuade, to induce a sale, to prompt someone to buy. The nonsensical chatter of the stereotypical salesperson should be viewed skeptically...."
He offers some useful suggestions for the novice skeptic to assist in evaluating claims made by an advertiser, such as to look at
"... the context of the claim, [i]s it reasonable to rely [on], were there measurable attributes mentioned, did the statements go beyond any standard of vagueness, or are the statements truly mere opinions...?"
One possible takeaway from the advice is that it may not be unlawful to exaggerate or to offer a subjective option that one's offering is the biggest, or the best, but the trick is to keep the pitch as vague as possible. One cannot fact-check vagueness.
By the way, my title, "Puff It Up" was inspired by "Pump It Up", a song by Elvis Costello and the Attractions.
All the best,
Rowena Cherry
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