When I was an undergraduate at BYU, my marketing professor showed some of the year's most popular television commercials in class. He asked us to vote on our favorites, and (inevitably) one of the beer commercials prevailed. Then he asked us to ponder this question, "Does advertising work?" After all, that student population was not likely to actually consume the beer we had seen advertised.

As a law firm summer associate in the late 1980s, I was asked to do some research for RJR on the effects of cigarette advertising. Did Joe Camel cause children to start smoking? Probably not. In any event, peers and parents were much more influential.

Of course, these thoughts about advertising were prompted by today's Super Bowl commercials. Bud Light's ads were far-and-away the best of the bunch (particularly the "Hitchhiker," "Classroom," and "Slap" spots), but I saw a number of entertaining commercials for products I do not use: Sierra Mist "Combover";  E-Trade "Robbery";  T-Mobile "My Favs"; and Nationwide "K-Fed."

Oh, I didn't watch the game, but congrats to Tony Dungy, Peyton Manning, and the rest of the Colts.

P.S. All of this talk about commercials prompted me to do a bit of searching on the internet, where I was reminded of the myriad jingles and slogans from my youth, including Alka Seltzer ("I can't believe I at the whole thing" and "The Unfinished Lunch") and McDonald's ("McDonald's is our kind of place, hap-hap-happy place" and "two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun). Just the other day, I was wondering about the effect of advertising in shaping young minds. Remember Coke's "Hilltop" ad? ("I'd like to buy the world a Coke ..."). I was only eight when that hit the air, but I remember thinking that it was really cool.

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