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

1980s:
"THE GUARDIAN"
"Point of View"
Boase Massimi Pollitt

The 1980s were a time when the insidiousness of preferring production values over ideas really began to come to the fore. Creative directors would begin to see student teams with the vaguest of "ideas" in their portfolios, but that was OK, these kids would say, because "Tony Kay would direct it." Like all the most brilliant ideas, the "Point of View" spot for London's Guardian newspaper could have been produced in the 1880s and would still have worked (although the main protagonist would probably have had to be the Artful Dodger).

If you aren't familiar with the spot (what are you doing pretending you're an ad professional?): Shot in black and white, it opens on a skinhead running away down a street as a van pulls out behind him as if in pursuit, the driver shouting at him. The voiceover says that an event viewed from one point of view gives one impression. Then we see the skinhead from another angle as he runs toward a man and grabs his briefcase violently. The VO says the same event viewed from another angle gives another impression. But, the VO continues, only when you see the whole picture do you get the true impression. This time we see a wide-angle shot, and we realize that the skinhead is not running from anyone, or mugging anyone. He is, in fact, saving the man with the briefcase from being flattened by a load of bricks falling from above. The VO closes by saying something about The Guardian being the place where you get the whole picture.

Incredibly, this spot didn't win the Black Pencil at D&AD that year, an eternal black mark against that overblown and out-of-touch organization and against the people on the jury, who were already reflecting the malaise then beginning to grip the ad industry of confusing brilliant ideas and special effects. Not that its creator, the genius John Webster, R.I.P., cared. His previous work already won a dozen or so of every major award in the world.






1990s:
LEVI'S
"Creek"
Bartle Bogle Hegarty

Production values were all the rage in the 1990s, and nobody did it better than BBH in London, then at the top of its game with John Hegarty on the case and not yet traveling the world. The jewel in its crown was Levi's, and every new spot was an event. The brilliant thing about BBH, however, was that production values were always in highly disciplined service to a strong and resonant central idea.

"Creek," shot by Vaughn & Anthea, maximized the sexiness of the Levi's brand by depicting a gorgeous, near-naked hunk in the context of prim, 19th-century mid-Americana. In the spot, a stagecoach takes a break, and two pretty young sisters, all curls and petticoats, skip to a nearby river. But they stop stock-still behind a tree as they spy said hunk coming out of a river, naked. Next to the trembling girls lie the man's jeans.

This section-just a guy coming out of the water, in excruciating slo-mo-is so powerfully and exquisitely done, a masterpiece of lensmanship and actor direction, that even today it gives you goosebumps: the shocked face of the older girl overcome with sexual tension; the droplets of water on the hunk's body as the shot dips below navel level; the moment that his lower half emerges ... clad in Levi's jeans. All the time the music-and every tune BBH used went to No. 1 on the charts in those days -- complements every single light and shade of action. The tension is broken as the older girl picks up the jeans and sees they are huge, ugly and shapeless -- as is their gnarled owner, a bearded old giant who emerges further downstream. Genius.






2000s:
BMW
"The Hire"
Fallon

As we come to the 21st century, great ideas still rule -- at least among successful clients and agencies -- but audiences are no longer lining up in front of TVs during commercial breaks to check out your latest chef d'oeuvre. "Find the audience" has become a must-have in every creative's approach. As has the need to create engagement and not just touch eyeballs. BMW Films did all of these things. Its greatness is confirmed if only by the amount of people claiming to be its originator-a world record for any advertising idea, I think.

The first of the online films, "Ambush," was the best, directed by the great John Frankenheimer and starring Clive Owen as a driver transporting diamond-courier Tomas Milian to safety while being chased by machine-gun-toting hijackers. Six minutes long and with some of the best car and driving footage ever, it was like a release valve for every one of us who had ever written a car ad and wanted to show a vehicle going through its paces without the kindergarten idiocy of "Professional driver, closed course" polluting the screen.

Beyond the craft, the thinking behind the work was simple: nearly 90 percent of BMW's audience (mid-40s, $150,000 income) looked at the Internet before buying. With numbers that will go down in history, well over 10 million have viewed the films, with more than 2 million registering on the site and asking for more information via e-mail. Over 90 percent recommended the films to others, creating a viral epidemic, while tens of thousands completed voluntary surveys. The ultimate interactive campaign.