The cause was complications of Alzheimer's disease, his wife, Kay Frankfurt, said.

Working at the New York agency Young & Rubicam and then at his own firm, Mr. Frankfurt led creative teams that coined memorable promotion lines for products and movies alike, including "Betcha can't eat just one," for Lay's potato chips, and "In space, no one can hear you scream," for "Alien" in 1979.

His television commercials were innovative in both their visual impact and emotional appeal. In a famous campaign for Eastern Airlines in the late 1960s called "The Wings of Man," he started with shots of cranes and owls and other birds in evoking the marvel of flight. Another ad, for Johnson's Baby Powder, featured close-ups of an infant from the mother's perspective.

Mr. Frankfurt was just a year out of college when, in 1957, he joined Young & Rubicam's nascent television division. There he was given a great deal of freedom to experiment in steering commercials away from the talking-head format toward a show-don't-tell approach. He used the sound of a beating heart for Excedrin ads and a strobe-lightlike effect for Band-Aids. A commercial for Modess sanitary napkins began with what appeared to be an abstract painting whose elements came together to form an elegant woman in a long evening gown.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired the commercial for its permanent collection.

Mr. Frankfurt would often enlist high-priced talent for his commercials, like the photographer Irving Penn for the baby powder campaign and the actor Bert Lahr for the Lay's potato chips spot. The director Howard Zieff, later known for films like "Private Benjamin" (1980), also worked for him.

"Television was a toy then," Mr. Frankfurt said in 1983 when he was named to the Art Directors Hall of Fame. "We had creative freedom."

Mr. Frankfurt became president of Young & Rubicam at the age of 36, a feat remarkable not just because of his relative youth but also because it was almost unheard-of then in advertising to have a top executive come out of the art department.

"A creative person being the head of an ad agency back then was unbelievable," said George Lois, a prominent art director who was pushing the creative boundaries at his own firm at the same time. Mr. Frankfurt's promotion, he said, was a sign of how the industry was embracing the experts in visual arts.

Hollywood also took note of Mr. Frankfurt's work. Alan J. Pakula, as the producer, hired him to create the title sequence for "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962), in which the tomboy Scout unpacks treasures from a cigar box to a haunting score. (These would later be revealed to be gifts from her mysterious neighbor Boo Radley.) His goal, Mr. Frankfurt told The New York Times in 2005, was "to find a way to get into the head of a child."

He went on to receive movie assignments regularly, creating titles and directing marketing campaigns for "Rosemary's Baby" (1968), "Superman" (1978) and "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979), among other films.

Stephen Owen Frankfurt was born on Dec. 17, 1931, in Manhattan to Blanche and Milton Frankfurt. His father was a lawyer for New York City. Stephen attended the High School of Music and Art and Pratt Institute. (He returned to Pratt to earn a doctorate in 1975.) Trying to break into the film industry, he worked as a background painter for an animation studio during college and immediately afterward.

He left Young & Rubicam four years after he was named president. "I never had a frustrating day in that company, until I became president," he said in an interview for the Art Directors Awards. He started his own communications firm, under his own name, in 1971.

Mr. Frankfurt's first marriage, to Suzanne Allen, ended in divorce. He married Kay Gadda in 1969. In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons from his first marriage, Jaime and Peter; four children from his second marriage, Nicholas, Abigail and Emily Frankfurt and Rebecca Nadler; a brother, Michael; and three grandchildren.