November 18, 2006

Holy, Holy, Holy

I'm not an advertising professional. That should come as no shock to most of you. I'm an amateur. I have nothing to sell but myself, and you really don't want to see a 30 second spot about that. I am however a self-proclaimed Ad-Geek. I have never had any formal training in the industry, but I've had a lot of interaction with professionals and besides watching a lot of TV, I read and pay attention to a lot in the Marketing and Advertising fields. The first podcast I ever started listening to was American Copywriter (it was being released a little more consistently back then, but I'm still a big fan). Anyway, I noticed the third in a trifecta of ads where someone in the spot says "holy" but is cut off before we hear what they are deeming holy. In my experience it's usually feces that they would be glorifying, but we all know you can't glorify feces on network TV and it definitely doesn't sell products.

I looked for YouTube clips for all three spots, but just found the one for Volkswagen. To my knowledge all the latest VW spots that feature the car being mashed also feature a similar utterance of "Holy."

The second occurrence is a Comcast ad for high speed internet. I live in a Comcast market so I'm not sure they're national. The spot features a couple that just had a dinner party and lament the fact they now have to do a bunch of dishes. The woman jokingly suggests he crack open his Comcast cable internet and get it done faster. Yadda yadda yadda and the dishes are done to the woman's amazement and she says "Holy..."

The completion of the trifecta is a Best Buy commercial that I saw for the first time today. An unmanned snowblower gives us the idea that whoever should be in charge of the snowblower is very distracted. We learn he's distracted by a neighbor's HDTV being delivered by Best Buy. Another man enters the picture and sees the TV and out slips, "Holy..." but before he can say another word, one of the other guys at the truck says "I know."

I'm sure the guys over at American Copywriter could tell me who wrote, directed and produced each of these three spots; I'm just hoping it's not the same agency...otherwise I'm on to you ad wizards.

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