If, like me, you’ve ever been on the despairing-end of a brief - the type with something along the lines of ‘just have a quick look and see if you can make it pop’ etc. - it never occurred to me to reply ‘how’d you like your potatoes?’

Admittedly it’s a little oblique.

Possibly could be misconstrued as either passive-aggressive, or that you’d finally transformed that long-simmering into a melt-down of Eyjafjallajökull proportions.

But consider the humble tuber.

Not only is it carb-loaded delight (mmm, chips…), it’s also a great metaphor for the idea that something so simple (like asking ‘to make it pop’) could be a recipe for disaster. Or rather, for the result the ask-ee hadn’t anticipated.

That things that are important - like logos, etc. - might seem a simple staple to some, are far from it. 

Ask the Potato Marketing Board. Well, actually, ask them in your head. In the UK we had such a thing from  1933 until 1997. Can you imagine the meetings?

Or ask of the brief, next time, boiled, fried, blowtorched or wrapped in newspaper (pop-chipped, possibly.)?

And (s)mash it with the potato parable.

*According to one Amiel Stanek, from Bon Appétit, who demonstrated it.