"Maybe an example would be better. Uh, you know the one about 'Three
out of five New York lawyers use Hamilton Bond Paper for note-taking'?"
"I've heard that, yes."
"Well, the clinker--that's the sneaky part of the ad, sir, or what we
call weasel-wording--the clinker in that one is that while it seems to
imply sixty percent of New York lawyers, it actually means precisely
what it says: Three out of five. For that particular product, we had
to question seventy-nine lawyers before we could come up with three who
liked Hamilton Bond, see? Then we took the names of the three, and the
names of two of the seventy-six men remaining, and kept them on file."
"On file?" Baxter frowned. "What for?"
"In case the Federal Trade Council got on our necks. We could prove
that three out of five lawyers used the product. Three out of those
five. See?"
"Ah," said Baxter, grinning. "I begin to. And your job is to test these
ads, before they reach the public. What fools you for five seconds will
fool the average consumer indefinitely."