Guinness Uses Puffery in their Advertisements Claiming "Guinness is Good for You" but have Merit and Should be Allowed to do so

When most people think of beer, healthy decisions are probably about the furthest thing from their mind. They’re more likely to think about watching a football game with a platter of chicken wings than about the nutritional content of their fermented beverage.  Some beers claim to be the “world’s most refreshing light beer” (Coors Light) or “the king of beers” (Budwiser). With so many breweries competing for the same fridge space, the breweries must become imaginative with their advertising.

One beer advertisement that stood out to me was the classic Guinness catchphrase “Guinness is good for you.” By keeping in mind what Guinness was most likely trying to accomplish with this ad we can see that they achieved these goals. One factor is trying to stand out from the pack. Taking the route of their beer being healthier than others Guinness charts a path not normally taken by beer companies. That uniqueness makes people take notice of their product and remember it. This brand recognition is the main goal of all advertising and will likely lead to increased sales for the company.

However, if the only thing companies needed to do to gain customers and sales was to say unique things, we would be bombarded with ads claiming the outrageous. One of the main reasons this doesn’t happen is for the fact that there are a number of laws in place regulating advertising, especially in the realm of false factual claims. However, when we don’t deal with blatantly absurd statements is when we get into a grey area. What happens when companies advertisements are using statements that aren’t necessarily flat out lies but aren’t facts either?

In these cases we are dealing with what is called advertising “puffery.” This occurs when companies use subjective descriptions and phrases for the product rather than objective and testable measures. The idea is that the advertisers are using this language to exaggerate the products and their performance to something beyond what it truly is. By looking at Guinness’ catch phrase “Guinness is good for you” we see that the brewer is doing just that.

When reasonable people see this type of advertisement from Guinness, they will not take the claim seriously. No rational person will truly believe that drinking an alcoholic beverage will actually have positive health effects for them. The fact that people will not take this claim at face value is one of the pillars of the idea of puffery. You may ask if Guinness does not reasonably expect people to take their phrase in their advertisement at face value, why would they even publish it?

The answer lies in another thing you will likely do with the advertisement. As we have established, you won’t start to think that Guinness is some new health solution from this advertisement. However, you very likely could start to think about Guinness in a much more positive light than you did prior to seeing this advertisement. You may not think that the beverage is healthy per se for you but you will likely start to frame it as being better for you than another beer at your disposal may be. The more people start to think this way, the more likely they are to buy Guinness, and lots of it. This is obviously good news for the brewery.

However, you may start to wonder how Guinness could even think to say something as preposterous as“Guinness is good for you” in the first place. The answer lies in this grey area we have established above. There are actually a number of facts that lend at least slight merit to the claim that Guinness may in fact be good for you. They do so in a way that the beer may be better for you than other beers out there, not necessarily a healthy option when you consider the full spectrum of nutrition choices out there. A study performed by the University of Wisconsin found that the famous Irish Stout has a high amount of antioxidant qualities to it as well as a high iron content. Both of these facts lend merit to the beer being healthier for you than its peers. The same study concluded that drinking the beer can reduce your risk of heart attacks and lessen blot clots. Another argument for the fact that Guinness is good for you is that it is vegan friendly.

While these facts may be far from endorsing Guinness as a new super food, there is convincing evidence that the beer has some positive health effects as compared to its competitors. For this reason I believe Guinness should still be able to advertise like this. They are not making any truly false claims and have some actual evidence that there is at least minor merit to their statements. These statements are not harming anyone, and while it is still fair to consider them puffery since they are not completely honest at face value they do have merit and should therefore be allowed to continue.