Not long ago I was out for a jog, and I passed a young chap with a dog on a lead. In his other hand he was holding a clear plastic bag with a poo in it.
Of course it wasn't a significant moment; I have no recollection of what he looked like, or what breed of dog it was. I jogged past and my mind automatically said "boy taking dog for a walk and to do toilet".
But something about the bag of poo got my mind working (takes all sorts, I know), and thinking about the presumptions I was making.
What if the poo wasn't from the dog but from the boy?
What if the dog was taking the boy outside to use the toilet?
What if the boy was actually taking his pet bag of poo for a walk, and on his way had found a dog?
Of course they're all highly improbable, and as a mental exercise it might seem pointless. But it's always worth looking for those assumptions, because when you break them, that's when you get people's attention.
Another example. A man I follow on Twitter was having bad day, then tweeted "Came home from work to this. Not pissed off anymore" with the following picture:
We assume that he's married, and come home to find his wife had baked these, and that therefore he was no longer pissed off because of the love and the rather tasty looking biscuits.
But what if he was unmarried and in fact lived alone, and he was no longer pissed off because he was terrified?
Keep tabs on this one; I want to make sure I get something like this into an ad someday.
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