When I was a kid people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I would say that I wanted to be in the A-Team. If you haven’t seen the A-Team it was pretty much the greatest television show ever. It was about a Special Forces unit who fought in Vietnam, and then went AWOL because of a moral conflict with their supervising officer. After they somehow got back to the United States (illegally) they stayed together and formed a group of mercenaries who helped nice people in trouble. Each member of the A-Team had a unique personality and a special trait. One of them was really handsome, one of them was great at planning, one of them was certifiably insane, and one was really strong. I was going to be the Jewish one who was good at indoor soccer, but I never got my chance. The show was cancelled in 1987.
I’m sad that I never became a member of the A-team, but happy that I found a career in advertising, because it’s pretty much the same thing. You work with random, talented people with varying degrees of mental stability, overcome insane obstacles, and sometimes help nice people turn their brands into culture defining ideas that become timeless – just like the A-team.
