A pirate looks at 50:

So I turned 50 yesterday and I realized that I have now been working in advertising for 28 years.  At some point along the way, I became the oldest person I know in the business, except for my partner Joe Castro who went to college with me but was educationally challenged so it took him longer to graduate.  When I started at Beber Silverstien in 1982, I had a Selectric typewriter and a cassette recorder as my tools.  We were just experimenting with this new gadget called a fax machine that used what resembled a big roll of toilet paper to print out messages from other techies that had one too.  The art directors actually drew layouts with their own bare hands and the studio used an exacto knife and sheets of type, cutting and pasting the copy on to the mechanicals.  I find it so funny that our computers now have cut and paste icons just to keep the tradition alive.

With all that has changed over the past three decades, there is one thing that remains and will always be the same, there is no substitute for a great idea.  We can have all the tools in the world, fancy computers, AVID’s, iPhones, QR codes, you name it, but if there is no idea behind it…you got nuthin.  The problem is that this new generation is so focused on the execution that they are losing sight of the idea.

So now that I’m in my 50’s and considered over the hill in ad life span, I’m going to concentrate on keeping ideas alive, so here is my first idea…I think I’ll take a nap, that’s a good idea.