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I still use a variant of this on projects for certain internal
customers; and I direct my subordinates to do the same thing, to their
great dismay.
Early in the twentieth century, J. Walter Thompson--the person, not the
company--was reviewing an ad layout that featured a kitten playing with
a ball of string. He instructed the art director to put a large pink bow
on the kitten's head. The artist threw a tantrum (some things never
change) complaining that this would ruin the composition, distract the
reader, and make a perfectly charming scene trite and treacly, instead.
When he was quite done venting, Thompson is said to have told him, "Yes.
You're right. The client will see that, too, and insist that the bow be
removed. He'll feel he has made an invaluable contribution to the
advertisement, and then he will approve it. Without the bow, he'll
reject the design and we'll have to start all over."
So when my illustrator gives me that you-don't-really-want-me-to-do-THAT
look, I just tell her it's a big pink bow, and she immediately accedes.
I do the same with the pieces I write, sometimes including whole
paragraphs that are three steps more outrageous than the ones I am
actually interested in preserving.
It all comes down to knowing your audience, right?
Herman Holtz wrote:
>
> Soldiers have used this device for many years, leaving a tiny
> imperfection to be found on Saturday morning inspection, satsfying the
> inspecting officer's need to find something, but not serious enough for a
> gig or loss of a weekend pass. (Yes, I did it too.) - Herm
>
> this guy needed to find an error within the first fewe pgs. of a deliverable
> [our deliverables were binders, documenting the zillions of manhours spent
> on stuff like SW maintenance, keeping COBOL code working, etc.].
>
> So we would include on purpose 1 or 2 typos or simple mistakes on the first
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