Filterbuy’s Air Filter Ad Starts Normal. Then It Gets Gloriously Unhinged

The spot starts normal. A parent in a yellow shirt slides a clean filter into the vent while the voiceover handles the sensible part: 600-plus sizes, shipped fast and free.

Then a bluebird lands on a shoulder. “Maybe too fresh,” the voiceover says.

Before the 30 seconds are up, a cartoon eagle owns the coffee table, a moose has nosed through the front door and two animated bunnies are schtupping on the bed.

This is an ad for air filters.

Specifically, it’s Filterbuy’s new national TV and digital campaign, built with PDA, the New York creative studio behind Dr. Squatch’s “Sydney’s Bathwater Bliss” soap.

That tracks. The bunnies were in the original script, and Filterbuy never wavered on keeping them.

An ad for a rectangle

Filterbuy makes the pleated rectangle behind the vent, a product most households think about four times a year, in a good year. Hannah Abe, the company’s senior director of growth, calls air filters “the ultimate low-consideration product.”

“Because it’s such an invisible purchase, comedy became an essential vehicle for cracking through consumer indifference,” Abe says.

The explainer they threw out

Michael O’Brien, Filterbuy’s head of creative performance, says the company grew on search and Amazon, which makes brand awareness “a completely new frontier for us.”

“We knew if we served up a generic explainer about changing your air filter, we’d lose people instantly,” O’Brien says.

David Yankelewitz, PDA’s founder and chief creative officer, read the quiet category as an opening. “When nobody else is fighting for share of voice, our mandate was: be as memorable and simple as possible to get Filterbuy permanently burned into people’s brains.”

So the explainer gets the first seven seconds. The unhinged part gets the other 23.

The humans scream. The animals are thrilled to be here

“We felt that the best way to make this funny idea land was for the family to be really scared,” Yankelewitz says. The animals, meanwhile, “should be innocent and friendly—and this animation style was a great way to achieve that.”

So a hand-drawn fox hops onto the dining table and takes out a vase. A grizzly closes its eyes and breathes like it’s at a spa. Raccoons work through the kitchen snacks, one of them wearing the chip bag.

Chipmunks chase the kids down the hall, one of them running with eyes covered. The bedroom explains why.

One day, one Airbnb, one puppeteer playing a raccoon

All of it was captured in a one-day shoot at an Airbnb rental, with Yellow Sweater handling production. The director of photography is dad to both kids on screen.

The animals arrived later, so the cast needed something to react to. “It was hilarious to see Yellow Sweater’s puppeteer, Scott, crouching behind the kitchen counter, wearing green gloves while he moves his hands inside a potato chip bag, pretending to be a raccoon with its head stuck inside,” Yankelewitz says.

The vase took several takes and a length of fishing line.

The idea that outgrew its budget

Filterbuy had budgeted for two videos and nearly passed on the concept. Then the team saw how far it could stretch and rethought the scope.

That’s how a Great Indoors Survival Kit and a Survival Guide booklet ended up riding along with product shipments. The kit is a camo duffel holding pepper spray, a LifeStraw and a jar of mixed nuts.

The nuts are bait. The guide recommends keeping snacks on hand to lure the animals back outside, then levels with the reader: “Most likely, you’ll end up eating this yourself, so make it tasty!”

Its other advice if animals break in: “Evacuate the home calmly and quietly. Alternately, you can hide in a closet.” A 15-second bonus cut shows someone doing that, livestreaming from hiding while the comments roll in. “Thoughts and prayers,” one reads.

The fine print

The Survival Guide is more cautious than the spot. A footnote concedes that animals will most likely “look upon your home with a stark indifference, or maybe a mild curiosity if you leave your door open.”

Stark indifference. The bunnies skipped that footnote. They were busy.

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