In advertising, success doesn't always mean the same thing to everyone involved. For the client, it means increased sales of his product, while for the copywriter it means cultural impact, and though there's nothing that says these two successes can't coincide, there's also nothing that says they have to.
Take what is by far the year's best and most influential TV spot, the one for Sapporo Beer with actors Tsutomu Yamazaki and Etsushi Toyokawa, dressed in yukata, playing a game of ping-pong. It's obvious the two men are staying at a hot spring resort, maybe on a company excursion, and that they've just come from a soak and are probably drunk.
The Sapporo CM isn't the first one that goofs on the fact that hot spring vacationers play ping-pong because it's the only available form of recreation. It isn't even the first liquor ad to do so. But no previous commercial deconstructed the game to reveal an interpersonal dynamic, and it does so with the winning of a single point.