A well-known principle of evolution, whether biological or technological, is that predator and prey refine each other. For every increase in speed or stealth or lethality a predator (or weapon or tactic) achieves, the prey (or defensive or evasive system) becomes more canny and elusive. Faster antelope are chased down and speeded up by faster cheetahs, more sophisticated burglar alarms create more sophisticated burglars, and so on.

The exact same thing goes on in the world of advertising. To get past the self-protective filter of ever more sophisticated, skeptical, and overwhelmed consumers, commercials have to become more striking, subtle, and memorable. This evolutionary pressure is turning the commercial into an art form.

It's not enough just to grab your attention and lodge in your memory – lots of commercials do so in an extremely annoying way, especially those, like car and drug ads, that directly pester you to buy something. ("HEAD ON! Apply diRECTly to the FOREhead!" repeated enough times will give you a headache.) There's a real danger of provoking an aversion to the product and a hatred of the company you're trying to promote. I have actually vowed never to buy the products of companies whose commercials drive me nuts.

The best kind of commercial is a tiny drama as compressed as a haiku, that has only an indirect, metaphorical relationship to the product being sold. These commercials don't force their sponsor on your attention, and paradoxically, they inspire in you a background feeling of gratitude and approval toward the company cool enough to commission them.

One recent example is the Bank of Scotland campaign, which featured a man choking while his lunch companions talked about the Heimlich Maneuver (this one was honored by the Heimlich Institute!), and a bride whose groom works a whole pre-nup with escape clauses into his "I do." In both cases, a handsome James Bondish fellow steps in and does what needs doing, embodying the slogan "Less Talk. Make It Happen." The subtext of the ad is that we live in a world devoid of decisive, action-ready masculinity, and the Bank of Scotland will provide a shot of testosterone, slashing dashingly through the dithering and red tape. (The third ad in the series, which involved quicksand, was more heavy-handed and much less effective.)

My current favorite is the spot (you can watch it on Windows) in which the haunted-looking Eastern European dreamer-inventor – I don't know where they found this guy who looks malnourished by longing, worn down by hoping against hope, as most Eastern Europeans did in, say, about 1985 – leaps from a bridge over a river with white wings on his arms, watched by a crowd of skeptical but credulous peasants. For a moment, his sad face burns with joy – "Ha HA! I can fly!!!" is what you know he's saying in, probably, Polish (a commenter says it's Czech), and the murmur, "He can fly!" runs through the crowd. Then one shrewd old man says softly, "But he can't swim!" and turns and walks off the bridge as the dreamer unhurriedly loses altitude and glides to a splashdown.