The doorbell rang. Mrs. Watson hurried to the door, two-year-old Freddie hot on her heels as always. It was the postman. As his mother took delivery of a special package and fumbled for a pen to sign the receipt, Freddie peeked happily around her skirt at the heavy brown shoes, blue uniform trousers, and up, up at … “Hey, you don’t have fingers,” he yelled. Mom blanched. The postman grinned. Over her stumbling apology, he said kindly, “Well, sonny, you’re right, I lost three of my fingers in a fire.” Freddie wasted no time. He knitted his eyebrows, pursed his lips and deepened his voice to the extent his budding vocal chords would allow. “Smokey Bear say, don’t play with matches.” In his book The Wizard of Ads, Roy Williams writes “the risk of insult is the price of clarity.” Thankfully, political correctness hasn’t invaded the heads of little people who still tell it like it is. Advertisers could take a lesson from Freddie. Most of them travel with the herd, avoiding clarity. Timidly, they hedge and side-step, preferring to speak in generalizations, finding comfort in euphemisms and the “dead words” of advertising. Smokey didn’t say, “Please avoid any activity that could have a combustible outcome.” Smokey was explicit. And even a two-year-old remembered.