MEDIA PERSPECTIVE: Editorial coverage can be a powerful commercial edge.(Motor Show ad.)

There are very few remarkable things about the Motor Show ad. The fact that its central image is that shrivelled hag of a cliche, a woman in a bra (copy: 'The other way to your man's heart is down the M6'), is probably the least remarkable of them all.

This sort of image is so familiar that its stand-out value is minimal It says nothing about the content of this year's event. It implies that the whole shebang is only for the 50 per cent of the population that wears underpants. It's not even titillating enough to really get all those underpants interested. If it's meant to be ironic, it's not ironic enough. But in blunt terms of doing its job - telling the world the Motor Show is on, and where - it is almost certainly one of the most effective ads of the year.

Its effectiveness lies in its media coverage, smothering the TV and newspapers over the past few days. Only a handful of UK advertisers could have afforded this sort of media schedule (and the Motor Show certainly isn't one of them). But none of them could have bought it. Even in the current climate, the top quarter of The Telegraph's front page is not for sale. And the Motor Show positively rampaged across BBC news.

It's not as though the ad itself was noticeable or offensive enough to have caused widespread revolt without the intervention of the trade and industry secretary, Patricia Hewitt, who has labelled it sexist. But by design or good fortune, this particular ...