Does our market react to ad campaigns?

It was just a thought that occured to me today morning, as I was looking at the Teach IndiA ad campaign that Times of India has undertaken...

Back in August last year, the sub-prime crisis had already broken out in the United States, the indication of financial troubles were looming. There was a feeling that the emerging markets will not take the blow of this economic downturn in the US. Also, around the same time, the 'Lead India' and the 'India Poised' campaigns were up and running in India. The correlation of the positive movement of the market and the campaign being run at the same time is worth noticing.

Towards the end of the year and with the dawn of the new year, these campaigns began to wane and so did the confidence in the stock markets. Essentially nothing had changed, as far as many of the sectors are concerned but the beating down was consistent across all sectors.

I know that there was an initial feeling that de-coupling will occur which never happened and FIIs pulled out of Indian markets and all of those stories that the finance gurus offer. But were the people offering advice to these FIIs not based out of India? Are they not human? Could they not get influenced by ads?

At the end of it all, I would like to say that; there is no conclusive evidence based on which, I have framed the above argument. It is just a thought and I think there is something there...