We asked top creatives from the industry for their three favorite ads from the past 30 years, one per decade. Here are Gerry Graf's picks.

1980s:
LITTLE CAESARS
"Origami"
Cliff Freeman and Partners

I was working as a stockbroker in Boston, and my friend Paul Clark asked me if I had seen this commercial for Little Caesars. When I asked him which one, he described it verbatim, which I guess is the sign of a good commercial: A guy at a pizza place asks if he can get two great pizzas for one low price. The guy behind the counter says he can only get one, but don't think of it as one pizza, think of it as one pizza and one box. The customer asks what he's going to do with a box. Then the pizza guy makes an origami pterodactyl out of the box and starts screaming. It became our running joke. When anyone asked us, "What's that?" we'd say, "A pterodactyl!" and start screaming. We were easily amused. It stuck in my brain and influenced how I wrote TV commercials: Get a great director, cast unexpected people, state the selling proposition and go nuts. Or state the selling proposition while going nuts. Another Little Caesars ad, "Lucky Sevens," with the kid who gets every answer to a test wrong, was awesome, too. Ian Mackenzie was the editor on that way back when. Later we stole the pencil-scratch sound effect for the E*Trade "Broker" spot. I like to think of it as a tribute. All the great comedy writers worked on Little Caesars ads: Eric Silver, Steve Dildarian, Matt Vescovo, Harold Einstein, Greg Bell, Eric Silver. If you look back at all the talent that came out of Cliff's, it's amazing.

Then there was Wendy's. "Soviet Fashion Show" is genius. Obviously, so is "Where's the Beef?" And don't forget "Parts Is Parts." The whole crew at Cliff Freeman -- Cliff, Arthur Bijur, Donna Weinham, et al. -- seemed to be having a blast, really just writing for themselves. There seemed to be a structure to Wendy's ads that everyone in the '90s ripped off. Take the fashion-show ad: you state the problem (having no choice), a voiceover says something like "Having no choice is no fun," then you bring the product in as hero-"That's why Wendy's gives you lots of choice," or something like that. I ripped it off for a Snickers campaign I did with Dave Gray at BBDO ("Not going anywhere for a while?"). My big regret is that I never worked at Cliff Freeman. Once, while I was at another agency, I helped a friend at Cliff's work on an assignment. So, I consider myself an honorary member.





1990s:
MILLER LITE
"Evil Beaver"
Fallon

This commercial changed my life. So, thanks Linus and Paul and Traktor. In 1997, I thought I was hot shit. I was working at Goodby, Silverstein, I was shooting an Isuzu spot with Traktor, staying at Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica. We had just finished day one of shooting, and Ulf Johansson of Traktor asked my partner Dave Gray and me if we wanted to see a rough cut of something he just shot with Fallon. He puts a tape in the VCR, and it's "Evil Beaver." Dave was laughing his ass off, and I chuckled too, but inside I was thinking, "I suck, I suck, I suck. I'm out here shooting a stupid Isuzu commercial, and there are people out there doing stuff like this -- a guy in a beaver suit with a Kaiser helmet riding a motorcycle with a Miller Lite, terrorizing some settlers. I suck, I suck, I suck." I fell into a pretty deep depression for a while. I then tried to write stuff that was "crazy," but crazy like the Swedes. That's what they called Paul Malmstrom and Linus Karlsson at the time. That didn't really work out so great. Those guys, along with Ulf and the rest of Traktor, just had this touch. I eventually found my own style. That was a good lesson to learn. I actually think it's in Ogilvy on Advertising. When you start out, find some work you love and copy it, but always try to morph it into your own style. Maybe Ogilvy didn't use the word "morph," but that was the gist of it.







2000s:
"CLOVERFIELD"
Teaser trailer
Paramount Pictures

So I'm at the Transformers movie, and there is a trailer for a movie that has something to do with people at a party in NYC. There is an explosion, and everyone runs out of the apartment. Then the Statue of Liberty's head comes flying through the air and bounces down the street. I leaned over to my wife and said, "I'm seeing this movie." But there is no name, just the date: 1-18-08. So, that's awesome enough. I just called it the Statue of Liberty's head movie. Then I heard you can go to 1-18-08.com. and check out pictures of the movie, which gave you clues. And I learned it's from the creator of Lost, so you know there is some hidden stuff going on. As the weeks went by, more and more pictures were added, more and more clues. By the time the movie came out, there was a Web site for Slusho, a Slurpee-type drink that J.J. Abrams used in Alias and I think even Lost. It had all these Japanese ads for the drink. After a while you figure out that Slusho is owned by Tagruato, which the Web site says is "a collective of top scientists, engineers, and businessmen committed to leading our investors and the whole of mankind into the future." Then, clips of news stories of oil rigs falling into the ocean started to appear, and videos of a girlfriend of someone who works at Tagruato. She eventually gets drunk and poisoned. By the time you get through this maze, you have the entire backstory of the movie, and you don't even know it. It ended up being the highest-grossing movie ever to be released in January. (I suck.)