Breaking Through Your Filter

Recently, I was briefing through FHM and I came to a page with an ad that showed a young man sitting in a bar. As he exchanges glances with an erotically attractive woman holding a glass of red wine, a text in the middle read: "Your refined movie collection just paid off." Surprisingly, the ad was not about wine, nor the clothes the woman was wearing, but a small digital object on the table where the young man was sitting. On the bottom a big text of the product's name "iRiver" with the slogan "the future of entertainment" appeared. After speculating about some subtle elements in the ad, I turned to the next page, for I was an effective defender against the furious effort that ad companies implement to urge me about giving up some of my dollars for what they are selling. However, the image of the ad and the name of the product remained in the easily accessible part of my brain as I carelessly glance through the ads on the other pages. A few days later, I listened to a presentation in my English Composition class that presented this same ad as an example of an "ineffective ad." My classmates made very logical arguments to support their point, but I was skeptic about the conclusion. …