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Is it possible that the most powerful communicators in human history have gone from working on epic poetry to plays to novels to movies to :30 second tv commercials?

I feel like I now regularly see commercials that I really like, to the point I'll stick around to watch it (whether it gets me to buy the product is incidental).

I wonder if we're living in some sortof golden age of commercials, the last days of an art form that's being strangled by Tivo and the end of a mass audience.

Here are some of my favorite tv commercials from this year:

-Snickers "Bald': Starts with a bald guy wearing the 'wig' made out of Snickers bars sitting in his car crying while thinking of his day, while Make Your Own Kind of Music by Bobby Sherman plays in the background. It's an odd concept, but it's well-done, from starting the commercial with the guy just sitting there quietly crying to the quaver in his voice when he responds to his office mates. BBDO New York

-Nextel 'Dance Party': Three (diverse!) coworkers are dancing in an office to Salt N' Pepa's Push It when their boss walks and demands some answers. The expressions on the faces of the two dancers and their moves are hilarious, as is the dead-pan look on the guy just sitting there holding the boombox and watching.

-T-Mobile 'Caffeinated Cheerleader': An arena of white-coated scientists study a teen cheerleader as she talks a mile-a-minute on her phone. Her voice is funny and she says these totally real-sounding yet random things, I particularly like the chewwwing gum and whole she was like whatever, I was like whatever part at the end.

I think commercials really started getting better after Nike was able to license the Beatles' Revolution for their AirMax shoe--after that, it was okay for all these reputable musicians to let commercials in the U.S. use their music, which add so much to a commercial's appeal.

(Incidentally, it's interesting that big Hollywood stars never used to do commercials here, only in Japan--as if what happens in Japan, stays in Japan. But as the article mentions, now the Japanese, like other Asians, are starting to prefer their own in commercials... wonder if someday historians will look back on this as one of the early signs of Asia's rise).

Frame grab of Nextel commercial from Adweek.