Claims must be specific and provable.

Marketing relies on superlatives and generalities ("best-in-class," "quality," "innovative") instead of specific facts, numbers and proof.

Generic claims are invisible because everyone makes them. Specific facts are believable, memorable and hard for competitors to copy.

Hopkins: "Platitudes and generalities roll off the human understanding like water from a duck." In his beer story (the brewer was Schlitz), every brand advertised "pure." Hopkins described filtered-air cooling rooms and bottles "washed four times by machinery." Every brewer did the same, "but he was the first to tell the people about them." Hopkins: "Actual figures are not generally discounted." His mail-order motto: "The more you tell, the more you sell." (Scientific Advertising, 1923)