Do Italians breakout in spontaneous applause a lot?
Running approximately 1,000 times per hour, the new Pizza Hut Tuscani commercial follows the classic example of Hardee’s and Folgers Crystals commercials by having hidden cameras record customer reactions to food that is unknown to them comes from a chain, in this case Pizza Hut’s lasagna.
Never mind what it says about your food when you have to trick people into eating it. The new Pizza Hut commercial is the least believable example of this hidden-camera genre I’ve seen. Here’s the three-minute obligatory “making of the video,” where Pizza Hut’s ad team acts like it’s setting up the sting of the century.
Quick: Off the top of your head, name how many times you’ve been in a restaurant, bookstore, etc., where customers started spontaneous applause. Yeah, my BS detector started going off, too.
Thinking it could be a culture thing I called my friend Rob, who lived in Sicily for five months. “I would say Italians break into spontaneous noise a lot,” he said. “They do catcalls, whistles. People will look like they’re arguing but they’re just talking. They’re very extreme in their emotions.”
Yes, but would they clap for say, a Pizza Hut lasagna? “They are better at applause in general. Italians like to make noise.” In other words, he seemed to be saying that yes, Italians would clap for a lasagna.
Just don’t expect to get the same results in the Bronx.
