Founder & Chief Creative Office / Barton F. Graf 9000
Gerry’s advertising career has spanned agencies like Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, BBDO/NY (where he served two stints, including one as ECD), TBWAChiatDay as ECD and Saatchi & Saatchi NY as CCO and member of the worldwide executive board. Ad Age’s Creativity magazine named him to the “Creativity 50”, “A multi-disciplinary account of the biggest and best thinkers and doers from 20 years of advertising and consumer culture.” In 2007, TBWAChiatDay NY was recognized as the most creatively awarded agency and Gerry as the most creatively awarded creative director in the world. He dropped to third most awarded in the world in 2009.
In July of 2010, Gerry Graf, Chief Creative Officer of Saatchi and Saatchi NY, called his mother, Eva Graf, and informed her that he was resigning in order to start his own agency.
Mrs. Graf instructed her son to go and ask the nice Saatchi people for his job back. She informed him that owning your own business was too risky. She told him of a time when his father, Barton F. Graf, wanted to open his own business; he sold semi-conductors. But Barton F. Graf had listened and never tried.
Gerry Graf got off the phone with his mother, opened his agency, and, mostly out of spite, named it after his father, Barton F. Graf. He noticed that his father had the same initials as the gun from the video game "Doom." He put the two together because it was silly, and Barton F. Graf 9000, LLC. was formed.
Today, Eva Graf is proud of her son, although she doesn't like the name of the agency. She said Barton F. Graf never liked guns.
Gerry is married and has three kids. He lives in Manhattan.
