We’ve all had clients who think the way to open a sales letter is to say, “As the world leader in intelligent solutions that do xyz, Acme Systems would like you to know blah blah etc…”
There are two obvious problems with this strategy. The first is that chest-pounding self-importance tends to put people off, not endear them. Readers want to know “what’s in it for me?”, not how great you think you are. And the second is that claims of superiority are not credible unless they are a/supported by hard facts and b/proffered by someone other than the person or company being judged.
You wouldn’t want to throw it in your client’s face that their self-centric posturing (which probably comes straight from the CEO’s corner office) is going to doom their campaign before it gets started, so here’s some useful third party validation: the U.S. Olympic Ski Team, which chose as their slogan for the recently-concluded Winter Games “Best in the World”.
The slogan didn’t say anything about the team’s passion or aspirations, as something so uninspired as “Striving to Be Our Best” might have done. It’s generic, anybody could have said it, and the only way it could have been remotely acceptable would be if you actually were best in the world, which our boys and girls demonstrably weren’t. So it became an object of ridicule, until ultimately Austrian skier Herman Maier, who actually is, shouted “best in the world!” from his victory podium.
Oh, here’s another objective test you can try with your client. Look up “best [insert your client’s business description] in the world” on Google and notice how many Adwords classified ads appear on the side. There almost certainly will be no ads at all. Try it with several variations and it will be the same. Meaning that everyone who has tried marketing to the phrase has abandoned it and it’s not even worth paying 1 cent for the top position. Best in the world, indeed.