Advertisinguese

To understand how advertising works, you need to pay attention to the way the words are put together. For instance, here's the exact wording of a poster at SuperFresh: You won't find better tasting beef at any other supermarket in the Northeast. Guaranteed. Woodson and James Angus Beef.


So what exactly does this mean? The key point to understand is that in advertising language, saying your product is "better" is the ultimate claim. In order to broadcast that claim of print it in a reputable outlet, you must offer hard evidence that your product is, in fact, superior to the other product. To say your product is "best" means only that nobody else is better, so, for example, you can say your brand of salt is the best-tasting, even though salt is salt and it all tastes the same, or that your detergent is best for removing stains. It would really mean what people think of as "best" if they said it was better that every other detergent for removing stains.

So what I saw on the sign was a weasely way of trying to get the word "Better" into the ad, and it certainly sounds superior to, "Our beef will taste at a minimum the same as beef from every other supermarket in the northeast," which is what it means. My two favorite weasel phrases? "Fresh picked," (well duh, of course it's fresh when it's picked) and "Hearth baked," (hearth means oven, and you got some other place you're baking stuff?).

I'm also intrigued by the guarantee. Do you think they'd argue with you and refuse to give your money back if you said you found better-tasting beef? What if you got your beef at someplace other than a supermarket. And what if you'd bought your beef in a border state, like Maryland, which is not technically in the Northeast? And who the heck are Woodson and James? Are those first or last names? And do you think they're real names or names the marketing manager thought sounded western and rancher-like? Same for Target's Sutton and Dodge Beef.

Not sayin' there's anything wrong with SuperFresh beef, just that it's not better when you use the words that way.