1. Trey Laird

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Never mind that he reportedly bagged Madonna for a cool $10 million to hawk Gap corduroys while singing a remix of Get Into the Groove with Missy Elliott. That's all just in a day's work for imagemaker Trey Laird. The real story is that Laird's creative vision--always making an emotional connection to the consumer--has put the Gap back in the black.

"Gap had lost its style. It didn't have any edge," says Laird, who broke into the art-directing business working for Peter Arnell and then Donna Karan. Customers were fleeing too. In the 27 months before Laird's arrival, the Gap had suffered consecutive same-store sales declines and had alienated core customers with products that were deemed too trendy. Laird's big idea was to bring the advertising back to its roots, taking the images out of the studio and putting them into everyday life. Already Gap's same-store sales for the four-week period ending Aug. 2 were up 13%.

For a guy with so much influence--Donna Karan and Nautica are still clients--Laird is remarkably humble. A native of Nacogdoches, Texas, he studied architecture in college but ended up with a degree in marketing. After following a girlfriend to New York City, Laird found a job selling shoes at Bergdorf Goodman, where he met adman Arnell. And, well, you know the story: resume, junior-account-executive job. Now Madonna and Missy. What next? "We're only just beginning," Laird says. "We have so much more work to do." --By Kate Betts