This weekend my wife and I saw the new Martin Scorcese film [The Departed](http://thedeparted.warnerbros.com/) which was one of the best movies I have seen in years. It was the kind of movie you keep thinking about days after you saw it. (No this isn’t a movie review.)

The show we saw was sold out – it was a hot ticket. Before the movie started we had to sit through about 20 minutes of commercials and movie previews (which can test anyone’s patience).

One of the commercials shown was by area residential real estate broker [William Pitt/Sotheby’s International Realty](http://www.williampittsir.com/).

As I recall, the advertisement was a black background with images of great masters paintings fading in and out with classical music playing. The narrator, with a distinguished voice, was rattling off the names of the paintings and their respectives artists like Renoir and Van Gogh and oh, all the art shown had houses in them.

The narrator in the advertisement said something along the lines of:

>These houses are priceless, have you had a professional tell you how much YOUR home is worth?

Emphasis on “your.”

The audience, spontaneously burst out laughing. It was an amazingly intense reaction.

I think the advertisement was about 2 years old and the audience probably wouldn’t have given the message a second thought when it was originally run.

Any doubts that the consumer does not understand the housing market should have ended at that moment.

That confirmation went well with my [Milk Duds](http://www.hersheys.com/products/details/milkduds.asp).