"The advertising has certainly contributed an element" to Nuveen's strong results, says Mr Timothy R. Schwertfeger, Nuveen's chief executive. For Super Bowl advertisers forking over $2.3 million on average for a 30-second spot this January 28, the lesson may be that the edgiest commercials are sometimes the most effective.

The 60-second Nuveen spot from Fallon, a unit of Publicis, turned the stomachs of many game watchers. In a make-believe awards ceremony set in the future, the commercial opens with an announcer standing before a podium in a dramatic circular auditorium. He ticks off some scientific victories of recent years, including cures for AIDS and cancer, then calls a special guest to the stage, to present the award for advances in spinal-cord research. Paralysed actor Mr Christopher Reeve appears to get out of his wheelchair and walk to the stage. Stunned, the audience applauds.

"In the future so many amazing things will happen in the world," a voice over says. "What amazing things can you make happen?" Nuveen isn't mentioned until the very end, when the ad flashes "Leave your mark ... Nuveen Investments."

Many viewers felt manipulated. "A lot of people thought, 'Christopher Reeve can walk!' " says Mr Peter Beckman, founder and chief executive of Adcritic.com. "They thought the technology came through, and that it was all thanks to Nuveen." The National Spinal Cord Injury Association reported that it received calls from people who thought Mr Reeve had been cured. Others say they felt used. "I was disturbed by the ad because it exploited my emotions to an extreme," says Mr Michael Markowitz, an advertising consultant.

But Nuveen has since fared extremely well. Shares of the Chicago wealth-management company rose from around $38 in January to about $58 at the end of the year, and profits have increased for the past three quarters in a row. In what has been for the most part an uneven stock market, sales of many of Nuveen's newest mutual funds are "up significantly," according to Mr Bruce Brewington, who analyses the performance of wealth-management companies for Putnam Lovell Securities. He cites the company's marketing as one reason for the strong sales.

Another sign that the ad worked: Marketers are using some of the same techniques that drew the most criticism. Rollins's Orkin Pest Control unit used similar technical tricks to blend fiction and reality. In March, Orkin aired a commercial that was ostensibly for "Sierra" fabric softener. Then what appeared to be an actual roach crawled across the TV screen, stunning some viewers. The "gotcha" was so effective that Orkin started an online contest to compile the most outrageous tales of how viewers were tricked into thinking their living rooms were infested with the bugs.

A few dozen furious people called Orkin headquarters in Atlanta, and nearly 100 wrote letters, angry they had been fooled. Some demanded that Orkin reimburse them for TV sets they smashed or damaged in an attempt to kill the bug. (It declined to do so.)

But sales were up during last summer's bug season and calls for extermination services rose 15 per cent over the previous year, according to Orkin spokeswoman Ms Martha May.

Mr Sergio Zyman, a marketing consultant who has examined last year's Super Bowl spots, says that while Nuveen's ad was among the least liked, it scored high in his assessment of the effectiveness of Super Bowl ads. Before the game, 1 per cent of viewers he surveyed said they intend to purchase Nuveen products. But after the ad aired, 2.8 per cent of viewers said they would buy Nuveen funds. He says the most-liked Super Bowl ads often fall flat when it comes to delivering results. Witness the "Mean Joe Greene" Coca-Cola spot that will be featured in this year's CBS special "Greatest Super Bowl Commercials." When the ad ran in 1980, "everybody loved it," says Mr Zyman, who was Coke's head of marketing at the time. But that year, Coke lost marketshare to Pepsi. "Mean Joe Greene didn't help," he says.

Nuveen won't be advertising on this year's Super Bowl, but it is preparing a second phase of last year's campaign. New print ads won't involve Mr Reeve but will promote the notion of investing for future generations. Nuveen spokesman Mr Christopher Allen says the ads will seek to replicate "the hope and optimism you saw in the Reeve commercial."

The Wall Street Journal