There is one phrase that sums up yesterday’s panel on puffery—puffery is f@#$*&% great.  The panel started with a bang by jumping right into a video advertisement for dollar shave club where CEO and panelist Michael Dubin informed the audience (and the world) that the blades offered by dollar shave club are not good, they are f@#$*&% great.  The panel’s energy did not stop there.

The panel dove into the age old question, how does one know when an advertising claim is a puff?  The starting place for the panel was of course black letter law.  The moderator, Terri Seligman from Frankfurt Kurnit, provided a thorough black letter definition of puffery—“an obviously exaggerated representation that is not objectively provable and that ordinary consumers would not rely upon in making a purchasing decision.”  The panel consisting of Michael Dubin (Dollar Shave Club); Gabriel Martinez (Clorox); Ndidi Oriji (NBC Universal); and Laura Brett (NAD), then gave their impressions of puffery—especially, what they consider NOT to be puffery.

The first observation is that if the claim is measurable, it is not puffery.  The panel discussed by way of example a Tropicana NAD case where Tropicana claimed its juice was the “World’s Best” juice.  The NAD found that this claim was puffery because “World’s Best” was a general, non-measurable claim of superiority.  The panel compared this case to a case where the claim “World’s Best Cat Litter” (Kent Nutrition Group, Inc. #5301) was challenged by Clorox.  The NAD held that the claim was not puffery because it was made in conjunction with multiple measurable claims (ends odor the best, lasts longer, clumps the best, as green as green can be, you can eat the cat litter because it’s made from corn, among others).  These claims are measurable and took what could have been a puffing claim and turned it into something that requires substantiation. The panel also noted that the advertiser did not participate in the NAD process in the Kent case and the advertiser was referred to the FTC, resulting in a closing letter.Continue Reading The Absolute Best Puffery Panel Ever!