I am one of the remaining few who remembers life before the Internet. It was cloudy. And back in those times, good, watchable, fun commercials were few and far in-between.

I have long suspected that the first drawings in caves were ads for a better life, drawn at the behest of a Neanderthal leader who was seeking to replace the more intelligent but less apt to survive Cro Magnon “tribe president.” (Not sure who won, but I suspect that back then, just like today, it must’ve been the one who spent mo’).

Then came some strange religion that destroyed and annihilated ads of the ones before it. Its Style Guide prohibited “idols”, which to most people it meant graphic representations, but then the “creatives” in some golden palace (the “paladins”, really), found some loopholes and reinterpretations, through which they managed to repaint the walls of their ritualistic loci. They’d never call it “godvertising” but that’s what it was.

Fast-forward to the 90s, I was a kid who “survived” communism with my consumer instincts mostly satisfied (due to my parents’ gargantuan efforts), but my eyeballs still too innocent, having seen only the low budget “imitations” of advertisements. I escaped unharmed by early childhood advertising of Coca Cola and McDonalds (I had not even watched a Pepsi commercial). I borrowed from the library here in Toronto video tapes of the Cannes Lions ads. Most of them were truly amazing.

Then the Internet came and with it, a website where, for a while, you could see and download any ad in QuickTime format. That website only lasted a few years, succumbing to silly intellectual property squabbles.

LE: If you're wondering what is my favourite commercial, I'd have to say it's gotta be a condom commercial. Car commercials are great for dramatic scenery, beer commercials seem to have a license to go overboard, but condom commercials walk a fine line between being innocent enough as to not enrage parents, sexy enough to get horny people to use them and generally sell the impossible: safety for lovers. I have even made a list; the best is possibly the one with the sheep (previously linked under the Romanian word for milkman, “laptar” in an article on tech support). Alternatively, if you would rather see some political commercials from across the pond – USA had their midterms shortly after the Romanian presidential elections, check them out in the Economist.

Yet that craving for the “shorter-than-a-short-film” wonder is still alive and well. The proof is in the existence (and persistence) of the “night of the publicity devourers” or, in Romanian, “Noaptea Devoratorilor de Publicitate” – an event that started in 1981 in France and in 1995 in Romania. For 2014, the event will take place in Bucharest, at “Polivalenta” on November 7 at 20:00 (8pm for Anglos).

Bilete sunt disponibile pe http://www.bilete.ro/comanda.asp?eveniment=5678, in oficiile Postei Romane, in magazinele Inmedio semnalizate bilete.ro, in magazinele Germanos, pe https://www.myticket.ro/evenimente/noaptea-devoratorilor-de-publicitate-sala-polivalenta-bucuresti-07-noiembrie-2014.html si in reteaua Diverta, Libraria Eminescu si magazinul Muzica.

Sources / More info: http://devoratori.ro/, yt_pl, wiki-lions