Other coverage of the "Pizza Hut Miracle":
Burly Bouquet's Short History of Religious Apparitons
A Sign: It's Jesus, or a Lunch Bargain (NYT/Atlanta Journal
Posted on 12/15/2010 3:06:44 PM PST by Alex Murphy
Was the Lord working some kind of miracle when Pizza Hut's billboards all over Atlanta amazingly got turned into media shrines for the followers of Jesus?
Or had the enterprising hand of man somehow intervened -- in a sort of mysterious way -- to make the image of Christ appear suddenly before motorists in giant forkfuls of spaghetti on 70 ad signs from Stone Mountain to Marietta?
"I can tell you without reservation we had nothing at all to do with it," said Pizza Hut's marketing director for the state of Georgia, Brian Hunt, when a reporter wondered out loud how much additional advertising mileage his value lunch campagin had gotten since an Atlanta woman told local newspapers she had seen Jesus on one of the company's $1.29 Spaghetti Junction" billboards.
If the Jesus vision is in fact the Lord's doing -- is He giving a message to Atlanta's faithful? Or is He giving Pizza Hut a helping hand? As reported in these pages, Domino's opens its first 50-seat Express! unit in Atlanta this month -- in an inspired move to convert Pizza Hut's loyal lunch congregation.
Indeed, the big Jesus story could be a miracle for Pizza Hut. Features on Pizza Hut's billboards -- appearing much farther and wider than the vision itself -- have shown up on national television and even in The New York Times.
"The coverage has been overwhelming," Hunt said. "But during that first week [of the vision controversy]) I was climbing the walls. The telephone wouldn't stop ringing."
Even though the stories talk more about Jesus than they do about the successful lunch promotion -- which has been running since March -- Pizza Hut is getting miles and miles of valuable free lineage, he admitted.
"I didn't know before [the Jesus stories started] that Pizza Hut sold spaghetti," claimed one Atlantan, who has drawn to the billboards. Even if she went away without seeing a religious vision, she still had a vision of Pizza Hut value.
[SNIP]
Hunt surmises that the Jesus image -- which he calls an abstraction -- showed up in the billboard enlargement somehow during the final stages of production.
"In the original photography there's nothing but spaghetti on a fork," he insisted. "That's something I can tell you beyond any doubt."
The average person who looks at one of the billboards, according to Hunt, "needs a whole lot of help finding Jesus." In fact, news reporters are finding two kinds of Atlantans lately: those who see Jesus and those who don't.
"Apparently the more creative and abstract a person you are, the easier He is to find," Hunt reasoned.
At the same time some people are claiming that the face in the spaghetti is not that of Jesus, but such performers as Willie Nelson, John Lennon and Jim Morrison.
Oddly, Atlanta has never been considered much of a religious destination outside of its being the annual host city for Southern Baptist conventioneers. Even the Pope bypassed Atlanta during his recent U.S. tour.
Yet Atlanta does have a reputation for advertising and marketing savvy.
The city's promoters outdid, of all places, Athens, Greece, to put Atlanta on the Summer Olympics tour for 1996.
Admittedly, some profound miracles of marketing have been visited onthis city, which is called the Sunbelt's capital. Could Pizza Hut's spaghetti Jesus be another one of them?
"I'm not so sure we're that smart," Hunt joked.
Other coverage of the "Pizza Hut Miracle":
Burly Bouquet's Short History of Religious Apparitons
A Sign: It's Jesus, or a Lunch Bargain (NYT/Atlanta Journal
Tip o’ the hat PING
Um, that’s a real stretch to call that blob the face of Jesus. Just saying...
$1.29 for spaghetti & meatballs? Man that’s cheap.
Yeah, I’m also having a hard time trying to imagine an image in that....
I agree! It’s much more like Tom Selleck. You got the moustache & everything.
Have you tried it? Do and you’ll see why it’s only $1.29, but then again I’m Italian so nothing compares to home cooking.
I’m a fundie and I can see the spaghetti Jesus. When they overlaid it on that board with the, er, criss-cross lines is probably when it became apparent.
Is it still $1.29 20 years later?
“Is it still $1.29 20 years later?”
That would be a miracle!
Notice that any time a shape that even faintly resembles a face appears, people say It’s Jesus’ face? Its insulting.
We have no idea what Jesus’ true face looks like. I do know I will know it when I see it.
“I have no idea who that is on the right and I couldn’t tell you who it is on the left but the guy in the middle looks like Willie Nelson”
Name that joke.
Jesus? Looks like a hippy with a big mustache and sunglasses.
Holy pasta, Batman!! Just think about that!! Nineteen years ago we were shown what Jesus looked like, and didn’t realize it.
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