Weasel words are used to plant an idea in readers’ minds that is bigger than the actual claim being made. Working from vague, indeterminate facts (or no facts at all), you can generate perceptions that may be completely at odds with reality, without making a definite, absolute or concrete claim that could be open to challenge. 

But should you do it? I’ve already made clear my own views on honesty in marketing. But needs must when the devil dances. Whether you use these techniques is up to you!

‘Help to’

In conjunction with ‘can’ (see below), ‘help to’ positions your product or service as part of the solution to a problem without taking sole credit. For example:

Crunchaflakes can help to reduce weight as part of a calorie-controlled diet

Of course they can. Any food can. With the calorie-controlled approach, it’s simply a question of adding up the calories and keeping below a set target. The claim is very carefully delineated and hedged about, and is neither distinctive nor remarkable. But it lodges the idea of weight loss in the reader’s mind.

‘Can’ and ‘could’

Use ‘can’ and ‘could’ for indefinite claims that you want to sound definite. For example:

While traditional fan heaters have an average lifetime of 10–15 years, the RoomHeater 32 can keep on pumping out heat for decades.

Indeed it can, if used relatively sparingly. If used incessantly, its lifetime would be much shorter. Caveat emptor!

Hundreds and thousands

Look again at the example above. What period does ‘decades’ actually denote? Dunno, but it sounds like ages – just as words like ‘dozens’, ‘hundreds’ and ‘thousands’ sound like big quantities.

Strictly speaking, 101 is ‘hundreds’ – it’s 1.01 hundreds, which is more than one and therefore plural. If you’re uncomfortable with that, stick to 200 and above, which is definitely more than one hundred. ‘Hundreds’ sounds bigger than ‘217’.

Fractions

Closely related is the word ‘fraction’, as in ‘now available at a fraction of the original price’. 99/100ths is a fraction, but your audience will think of the ones they learned at school, like 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4, which will make them think you’re offering a huge discount.

Relative improvement

Whiter teeth. Improved search engine rankings. Increased sales. Shinier hair. Whatever it is you’re offering to do, make it relative and unquantified, not absolute and specific. That way, even the tiniest improvement fulfils the promise.

Yes, of course my copywriting will increase your sales. I guarantee it. By up to 50%.

‘Up to’

‘Up to’ or ‘as much as’ are used when you want to quote a numerical or statistical claim, but can only substantiate it within a certain range.

For example, you might be marketing a service that gets people tax rebates. Let’s say that on average, people get rebates of around 10% of their bills, but some have received 50%. Instead of quoting the average, or the range, you can say ‘customers have received rebates of up to 50%’.

All you’re really saying is that the rebate is in the range 0%–50%, but it’s the upper number that will stick in people’s minds. Very few will infer the corollary, which is ‘some customers got nothing’.

Note that the ‘up to’ number must be honest: it may be unusual or exceptional, but it must be achievable.

‘Over’ and ‘more than’

Closely related to ‘up to’, ‘over’ and ‘more than’ make numbers sound larger than they are. For example, ‘over 50%’ sounds bigger than ‘51%’. When given a vague numerical range, people tend to overestimate. (If you want them to underestimate, use ‘under’ or ‘less than’.)

Watch out for using both ‘up to’ and ‘more’ together, which results in nonsense:

Save up to £50 or more!

Here, the £50 is neither a minimum or a maximum, just an arbitrary point in a completely undefined range. Although the audience may latch on to the £50, blurring the meaning twice means more confusion rather than more impact.

‘As much as’ and ‘as little as’

For a rhetorical twist, use ‘as much as’ or ‘as little as’ to imply that the figure you’re quoting is particularly high or low. For example:

The iPhone is now available for as little as £35 per month.

This suggests that £35 is low, but with no frame of reference to substantiate the claim.

Reported beliefs

Tom Albrighton is now regarded as the best copywriter in the UK.

Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? But who’s doing the regarding? Charles Saatchi, or my mum?

The use of the passive case, which omits the subject of the verb, allows you to say something is being done without specifying who’s doing it. With verbs such as ‘thought’ or ‘believed’, you can put out a claim that may be completely unsubstantiated, simply by saying that someone thinks it’s true.

You can also use abstract nouns such as ‘concerns’ (usually ‘growing’), ‘speculation’ (often ‘intense’ due to being ‘fuelled’) or ‘allegation’ (probably ‘fresh’) to generate a sense that something’s cooking without naming the chef.

This ploy is very commonly used in political journalism, often to report an ‘off the record’ sentiment from a genuine source. A typical sentence might begin ‘Critics of the Prime Minister now believe…’.

Consider the following quote from this Guardian story, which brings all the techniques together in one sentence:

The disclosures will fuel growing concern that the prince is continuing to interfere in political matters when many believe he should remain neutral if he wishes to become king.

Who is concerned, and why will the disclosures fuel their concerns? Who are the ‘many’ who believe Charles should remain neutral? What is the factual basis for saying that he might not succeed to the throne, or that his succession is conditional on his behaviour? What, actually, is being said here?

Nothing. But it sounds good. 

Rhetorical reinforcement

Use words such as ‘clearly’, ‘surely’, ‘self-evidently’ to make a premise sound like a conclusion. These rhetorical words add weight to a statement that may have no basis in fact.

Surely the recession is now drawing to a close?

It may be, or it may not – you haven’t actually said either way, but readers will think you have.

Unprovable superlatives

The CDs entitled ‘The best rock album in the world… ever!’ and similar highlighted the useful fact that superlatives are unprovable.

Suppose you start describing your firm as a ‘leading local widget maker’. Are you including firms who make other things as well as widgets? Or just widget specialists? Or just local widget specialists?

What’s more, how do you define ‘leading’? Do you sell most widgets? Make most money from widgets? Or just make the best widgets? Or are you just one of the best at making widgets? It really doesn’t matter, because the only thing readers will remember is ‘leading’. They won’t be querying your definition.

If you’re still unsure about your claim, dilute it with ‘regarded as’ or something similar, or position yourself as ‘one of the leading…’. Does that mean one of the top 10? The top 100? The top 1000?

Or you could copy Carlsberg, whose addition of ‘probably’ to ‘the best lager in the world’ allowed them to float the most outrageous marketing claim of all (‘best in world’) without actually making it.

When discussing copywriting assignments with my clients, I sometimes feel obliged to point out that whatever I write about their business should be true.

It’s not that they’re asking me to tell outright lies. It’s more a desire to be over-optimistic or economical with the truth in areas such as the scope or depth of their services, the size of the business or the nature of their approach. The urge to ‘big up’ the offering is powerful.

Many small marketing firms fall prey to this temptation, anxious to position themselves as ‘full-service’ agencies instead of playing to their unique (albeit narrow) strengths. I have also worked with many sole traders who wanted to position themselves as companies (in fact, I do it myself).

Since words can carry so many shades of meaning, it’s easy enough for the copywriter to bend or stretch the truth without overstepping the mark. Trusty stalwarts like ‘leading’, ‘extensive’, ‘premium’, ‘consultative’ and so on can make any firm sound fantastic without really making any concrete claim at all. But should we always do this, just because we can?

NLP teaches us that in order to communicate effectively on a personal level, we have to be congruent: our words, looks and gestures should all tell the same story. A job candidate who claims to be confident but can’t make eye contact is not congruent; nor is a consultant who can’t stop talking about himself.

It’s easy to see how this principle can be extended to businesses as well as individuals. In terms of marketing, your design, branding and copywriting all need to be ‘on brand’ – expressing a consistent message. But promises are easy to make and words are cheap; problems arise when the message doesn’t match reality.

Customers aren’t stupid, and they know when they’re being lied to. Will the marketing claim be justified by their experience? And if it isn’t, what will be the long-term effects on the relationship, or the firm’s reputation?

In the case of the small marketing firms and sole traders mentioned above, the illusion is often shattered in the very first phone call. So was it even worth creating it in the first place? Does putting up a front bring us closer to our customers, or just build a wall between us?

I once saw a memorable talk by brand guru BJ Cunningham, creator of Death cigarettes (’the honest smoke’). He spoke of his consulting work for an insurance firm called Pinnacle (now part of BNP Paribas). In common with many service companies these days, they wanted their branding to carry a softer, friendlier message. Yet internally, their employees called the company ‘cynical Pinnacle’ – a reference to its reluctance to pay out on claims. As BJ pointed out, this was a strength, not a weakness – who wants to buy insurance from a soft ‘n’ cuddly firm that pays out on weak claims and charges big premiums as a result?

BJ’s marketing advice to Pinnacle – based on commercial sense as much as ethics ­– was to emphasise their actual strengths, not cover them up with fake ones. The honest truth expressed a benefit that customers really wanted to hear. And it would be congruent with the way staff actually dealt with customers, without any need for patronising education about ‘brand values’.

Admittedly, there’s a case for being ‘aspirational’ in your marketing. Articulate a future and believe in it and you can make it real. But it’s important to guard against marketing completely to your own people – or to yourself. Address yourself to your customers, and talk to their priorities with honesty and integrity. There simply is no stronger basis for marketing.