I dunno, nothing about advertising makes sense to me, so I guess I have trouble evaluating this kind of thing.
Common sense would tell you that you don't give 4 billion dollars to the guy who says "I'm really good at convincing people to part with their money -- whether they should or not!" But then I don't run Coca Cola, so I guess they've figured out something I've missed.
In 2010, Pepsi switched at least their superb owl advertising budget to feel good community projects and lost sales at 6% vs a 4.3% overall decline for soda. Advertising drives sales, even if you can't tie a sale directly to an ad.
