Ad of the decade: Industry leaders share their favourite creative work

I have to admit, when embarking on this feature I was concerned that the responses I would get would be obscure, hard-to-find, advertisements that I would have to dig through the deep, dark internet to procure. I was asking the bigwigs for their favourite ads – whether it be for sentimental reasons or the fact that one particular ad represented a change in the industry or Australia at large.

However, the responses I did receive made me feel both pleasantly surprised and foolish, because it seemed so clear – ‘of course they are the favourites – they are some of the best’. But they also marked the great amount of respect the industry holds for some of the groundbreaking work that rolled out in the past 10 years.

To start out are two of the most acclaimed pieces of Australian work from the past decade, ‘Meet Graham’ and ‘Dumb Ways to Die’, selected by DDB’s national chief creative officer, Ben Welsh.

DDB Sydney national chief creative officer Ben Welsh