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Plumbing + Get AlertsAn Austin, Texas-based plumbing company has become known in its community for its various pun-heavy and satirical marketing materials, from radio spots to window displays. A main attraction, though, is its 30-second TV ads, which are typically movie-themed.
Radiant Plumbing & Air Conditioning and its skill at movie parody with titles such as Star Wars and The Terminator, caught the attention of comedian John Oliver back in March. Oliver dedicated a segment of his HBO show to praising Radiant Plumbing’s clever cinema-based marketing, before issuing a challenge.
“Is there any movie they can’t turn into a commercial?” Oliver said, then explaining that if Radiant Plumbing committed to doing a plumbing parody of a movie he had written inside of a mystery envelope, he would debut the commercial on his show as well as donate $10,000 to the Central Texas Food Bank.
Well, the results of that challenge are in. And Oliver made sure it would be a challenge, selecting as the movie to parody Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling, three-hour-long epic from 1999 Magnolia. Not exactly the kind of film with easily identifiable imagery in the vein of Star Wars or The Terminator.
True to his word, Oliver recently debuted what Radiant Plumbing produced, titled Magtoiletolia (Radiant Plumbing usually incorporates “toilet” into all its movie spoofs), and donated $10,000 to the Central Texas Food Bank. Radiant Plumbing decided to match that and also donated $10,000 to the San Antonio Food Bank, another community the company serves.
Check out the segment about it from Last Week Tonight With John Oliver: