I problems.

Many many years ago when mammoths were still wooly and homos were mostly erectus, I worked with an art director who was really a very smart guy. We were kids at that point and he might have had 15 months experience while I might have had 15 minutes. He was wiser than I in the ways of the business.

One afternoon we had to present something to our bosses. My partner, let’s call him Craig, did most of presenting.

“We were thinking this so we did that. Then we thought about that, and that led us to this.” And so on.

When Craig finished, I said to him, “You know, you did most of the work, but you always credited it to both of us. Thank you.”

Craig said to me something I’ve never forgotten. “There’s no I in advertising. Sometimes you’re going to carry me. And sometimes I’m going to carry you. It will even out. We have to all support each other.”

These days, maybe it’s the Bombast of our Trumpian, self-promoting and self-aggrandizing era, the pronoun “I” has forged a comeback. I has charged to the front like a Derby winner who was 15 lengths behind coming into the home-stretch.

It sucks.

This is not an I business.

Even if you have the idea yourself.

You might have gotten it from something you heard somewhere. You might have been pissed about something you read in a brief, and that anger led you to something good. You might have remembered a joke or a commercial you saw nine years earlier. The idea—“your” idea came from someone and somewhere else.

I in advertising is the mark of a scoundrel. It probably is in all of life. You know, it takes a village.

Watch out for I.

If you hear it too often, it’s not good for you.
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BTW, yesterday was Charlie "Bird" Parker's 100th Birthday. 
Salt Peanuts is in order.