The most eloquent tribute to the career of creative director Gary Gray, this year’s recipient of the Fritz Speiss Award, is airing on television today.

The graphics are a lot different and the music has changed, but the core idea of the commercial that Gray helped to develop over a decade ago in the tough, advertising-intensive candy category is still as effective today. Who can quarrel with the question, ‘When you eat your Smarties do you eat the red one last?’

Enduring campaigns were a hallmark of Gray who, through three decades in Canadian advertising was behind other memorable campaigns such as the ‘Get Crackin’ ‘ promotion for the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency, and the ‘Wear a Mustache’ program that gave new personality to milk consumption.

A graduate of the Ryerson Polytechnic Institute of Technology’s Radio and Television Arts program, Gray got his start in advertising with the Toronto office of Spitzer and Mills Advertising as a senior broadcast producer in 1960.

Three years later he moved from production to the creative department when he joined the newly opened office of Ogilvy and Mather as a copywriter. Over the next 17 years, Gray became a part of one of the hottest agency streaks in Canadian history.

In addition to cema and the Ontario Milk Marketing Board, Gray worked on such brands as Maxwell House coffee, Minute Rice, Tang, Coffee Crisp, Shell Oil and Carlsberg beer.

In 1981, Gray joined Vickers and Benson Advertising as a creative director, working with senior executive Paul Carder on the agency’s traditional packaged goods accounts. Three years later, Gray and Carder purchased those accounts from v&b and opened Carder Gray Advertising with billings of $27 million.

In 1989, the agency merged with DDB Needham Worldwide and two years later, Gray was named chairman emeritus of the company.

Gray opened his own firm, Gary Gray and Associates, in 1992.