What makes a commercial powerful and lasting?

Since I am in Canada these days and since I am most interested in the momentous changes that have been going on in the field of marketing for the past couple of years, I 'd like to comment a beautiful advertising campaign. It's the Molson campaign that was released many years ago and which plays very well on the existence of stereotypes commonly held by Americans about (did I say a-boot?) Canadians. Quite clearly this is an ad that captures human attention mainly because it's fun and light. See for yourself:

But there are other aspects to it that are interesting amongst which is the fact that it lends itself to sequels and to further exploitation of the dominants stereotypes. Here's a second film that illustrates this:

On the same theme, a couple of friends told me about (a-boot?) somebody who produced a derivative version of the Molson ad that makes huge fun of the cultural divide between French speaking and English speaking Canadians.

Perhaps a good way to bring sterile debates to a fairer proportion than politicians would like to and perhaps a good inspiration for somebody to do something analogous in Belgium because the people of that country deserve a much better political leadership IMHO.

So, what makes a commercial powerful (i.e. capable of seizing human attention in a world of content overload)? What makes it last and get a second life in a radically transformed media environment? I wonder whether there are other ads from past years that could be exploited by modern day communication agencies in the interactive space as shaped by the Internet to deliver high impact campaigns...