Add Some {Brackets}

I stumbled on some sneaky wisdom from Seth on how to better sell stuff through:

If you need to get your audacious proposal/clever ad/new project past your boss, go ahead and add some gratuitous brackets here and {there}.

“Hey, what are these weird brackets doing here,” she might say.
“Oh, I like them. I think they add drama to the headline.”
“Take them out!”

Giving in early makes it easier to keep the important stuff in later.

- Seth

I’ve definitely heard about this technique a bunch of times from creative teams, but I’ve never been in the room with someone who has actually had the balls to use it. I think people are either so confident that the “work” will sell itself and they don’t want to muddy it up, or they are afraid that someone is going to call them out on using a blatant selling technique.

But I’m all for it. You need to do what you need to do in order to sell your ideas through. If it’s manipulating the situation so that people are in a favorable mood to agree with you, why not? People do it all the time. One thing that I try to do is always have food at a meeting when I’m trying to sell. People are happy when they’re eating. And happy people buy ideas more easily that grumpy people.

It’s not sneaky. It’s smart.

- Christian