For the greater great

I saw a wonderful ad yesterday, on top of a taxicab of all places. It was for some auto collision place and their slogan was "The best in excellence."

Now I always say that once your business gets to the point where your ads say, "the best just got better," or something like it, that it's time to turn off the lights and go home. This, however, has infinite possibilities. You can almost hear the customers, "Wow, that was the best excellence I ever had." And, like I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, it can apply to pretty much anything.

One of the weird logic twists in advertising is the use of the superlative. You can say your product is "best" if all the products are identical, I guess because "tied for best with everything else" isn't compelling and if maybe it's not true, it's not exactly false either. "Unsurpassed" would be more accurate, I suppose. What you can't say without proof, however, is that your product is "better." Once you throw a comparison in, you need to support your claim. So "better" is superior to "best." Tell that to your Latin teacher.

When I was working advertising Sprite, we did a taste test versus 7-Up, which was the leading lemon-lime soda at the time. About 80% of tasters couldn't tell the difference. Of the remainder, about 10.3% preferred Sprite and 9.7% preferred 7-Up. So, of course, we did an ad that said, "Taste tests show, Sprite tastes better than 7-Up" and then at the bottom of the screen in little white letters it said (Among those stating a preference). This is why (a) advertising is fun, and (2) advertising is evil.