Your ideas are your value

+Today I was asked if I took credit for every idea. I turned it into a joke, saying "only the good ones". But honestly, I was a bit hurt by that. I'm one of the first people to give credit where credit is due. In a lot of ways, that's sadly the minority of the people in the ad business. I will say when an idea is mine though. What I do is come up with ideas. It's what I get paid to do. It's how I put a roof over my head. If I don't take credit for my ideas, I risk someone else jumping up and claiming it as theirs. In fact, I've had other people take credit for the work I've done or make it appear as if they did the work I have. It sucks and I've seem much worse happen to people I know.

in college, I had a friend who was about to graduate who had her book stolen by a classmate who then took it to all the big agencies in NYC. She basically had to start from scratch, since she had wanted to work at those same places. It was awful.

You see it more and more on the Internet too. the other day Coudal blogged about some person who contact him asking to for the source files from one of his design projects so that this stranger could use it as his work for a client. Seriously. 


So, perhaps maybe t's more clear why someone might try to make sure they are correctly credited for their work.