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Who

The chief creative officer of DDB, Garfinkel is a veteran ad creative who's been behind a slew of memorable commercials. For starters, you can thank him for bringing together Cindy Crawford and Pepsi.

Backstory

The Bronx native tried stand-up comedy but he didn't like the spotlight much (or it didn't like him) and decided to go into advertising instead. Garfinkel spent most of the 1980s at the now-defunct company Levine, Huntley, Schmidt & Beaver writing ads for Subaru, moving to BBDO/New York in 1989, where he introduced Cindy to Pepsi. During stints at Lowe and D'Arcy, he went on to create memorable ads for Diet Coke featuring the beefy construction worker Lucky Vanous, and he was the man behind Heineken's "It's all about the beer" campaign. Now, as chairman and chief creative officer of DDB New York, Garfinkel is back on the Subaru campaign once again. He's come up with some creative ideas for the carmaker in recent years; once, instead of booking TV spots, he had a collection of cars parked in ritzy neighborhoods to get well-heeled buyers interested. "All it cost was a possible parking ticket," he said. Other clients include Lipton Tea, Phillips, and Diet Pepsi: In one recent spot for the soft drink company, he actually sang the jingle and played the guitar in the commercial.

In print

Garfinkel and his former agency, Levine, Huntley, Schmidt & Beaver, figure prominently in Where the Suckers Moon, Randall Rothenberg's 1995 book about Subaru's search for an ad agency in the early 1990s.

Personal

The diminutive ad guru—who has kept the mustache flame burning for decades now—is married to Shelley Garfinkel. They have two grown daughters (Alisha and Jacki) and live in Pound Ridge. That's where Garfinkel, an auto enthusiast, keeps his Porsche 911, although chances are the veteran ad man will tell you that his trusty Subaru Forester wagon is his favorite car to drive if you ask.

No joke

Garfinkel was classmates with Jerry Seinfeld at Queens College.