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The guys kick off the week by getting into what constitutes false advertising and what is mere puffery. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our business podcast where we cover business news and add our legal twist and my name is Nasir Pasha. Welcome to the program! MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: Very good. That was a perfect intro. But, once again, I messed up by mentioning it. MATT: Even though I don’t think you’ll ever have a perfect intro, I’m still going to say this is the best podcast ever. NASIR: I would say so. I would have no disagreement with that. MATT: What if I said it was the fastest-growing podcast ever? NASIR: It’s a fast-growing podcast – a very fast. MATT: Well, it depends. I mean, if I took a look, 07:32:12 a.m. through 07:32:13 a.m. and looked at the growth, if we got, like, three people, I might consider it the fastest-growing podcast. NASIR: Possibly – probably not, but yeah. MATT: So, if you can’t tell, our topic for today is going to be what I call “puffery” which probably, you advertising people out there, you’re going to love this one because this is going to tell you, well, we’re not going to tell you if you’re doing it right or wrong. Well, we’re not going to tell you if you’re doing it right or wrong, but there’s certain things you can say and certain things you can’t, and there’s a recent story here with Slack and that’s why I got the fastest-growing podcast because they declared they’re the fastest-growing business app ever – which seems like a stretch. NASIR: Yeah, which I find hard to believe since I’m not even sure what exactly they do, but it looks like team communication. Maybe it’s not something that I would ever use so maybe that’s why I haven’t heard of it. MATT: Well, yeah, and I would question it even if it was, like, the most popular – even if, like, Google said that or something. I don’t know. It just seems like that’s a very hard thing to quantify. Let’s see. It has more than 500,000 people using it every day, but it’s a user count group by 35 percent in just the first six weeks of the year, 1.7 billion messages – I guess that really doesn’t matter. But, obviously, if you want to declare something, the fastest "blah blah blah" ever, I mean, there’s different ways to measure. “I’m the best shooting point guard of all time,” if you look at this one game and I shot 12 for 12 from the field. NASIR: Versus a career. Versus, you know, only regulation play versus, you know, playoff plays. Yeah, you’re right. I mean, I think Slack, they base it upon users – that’s my assumption, at least. But I think, in this case, even when making that statement, even though there’s multiple ways to measure it, you do have to back it up, and I think, if you’re able to make a statement like that and back it up, I think it’s a powerful marketing message, you know, to declare yourself the fastest, the best, et cetera, it’s pretty cool. But “best” is something different though. You know, I think a lot of coffee shops have, like, “the best coffee in town” or “the best coffee in the United States.” Do you remember that movie, Elf with Will Ferrell? MATT: Yeah, I’ve seen that. NASIR: He sees this sign on the outside that says something like “World’s Best Coffee” and he goes inside and congratulates everyone. He’s very excited. It reminds me of that. But that’s still opinionated. That’s still kind of an exaggeration and puffery within the guidelines of true advertising. MATT: Everyone sees that all the time if you go to any stores. But we have to mention, of course, the number one boss coffee mug of Michael Scott. NASIR: Oh, yeah. MATT: It wouldn’t be this podcast if we didn’t mention that, but it’s where you draw the line. So, the restaurants are always tricky because it’ll say, like, “Voted Best Restaurant” but there’s so many different publications and things that have the voting. It can literally mean anything. There’s a difference between that and something that’s very q...