Giving Credit to Those Who Influenced Ad Man

Nice tribute to a distinguished advertiser/business leader (“He Totally Got It,” May 9, by Reed Johnson), but the writer failed to credit those before Jay Chiat who undoubtedly influenced him: the founders and practically everyone at Doyle Dane Bernbach in the late ‘50s and ‘60s--Carl Ally, Jack Tinker, Mary Wells Lawrence--as well as West Coast-style originators such as Carson Roberts, the L.A. office of Doyle Dane, and the whole creative revolution in advertising of that era. It wasn’t all “inane jingles by huge conglomerates” until Chiat/Day came along. Jay Chiat would have been the first to give credit to those whose influences made his success possible.

EARL GANDEL

Pacific Palisades