Soft-sell approach in advertising

Mary Stewart says that in the soft-sell approach in advertising, a sensory response is expected rather than a rational one (334). This helped explain a lot about what I find confusing about advertising. So often, I watch an ad and by the end I wonder "And what did that have to do with your product??" I've been expecting the hard-sell approach--the rational connection between the message of the ad and the product. While this shows a lack of understanding on my part about the nature of ads--because I didn't understand the soft-sell approach, it also shows a failure on the part on the advertisers because I didn't connect with the ad.