Hidden camera prank - Purolator | Clapboard Ad Archive

For Purolator’s You Found What in My Engine? campaign, the brand, in partnership with Gelia, hijacks the well-trodden hidden camera prank show format to inject personality into the otherwise functional automotive filter segment, illustrating through a playful real-world stunt how nothing gets by their products. Created in Year 2016 for the US market, the activation places unsuspecting customers at an automotive repair shop in Buffalo, NY as mechanics—collaborating as participants—present a litany of improbable discoveries from oven mitts to dog bones in engine compartments, each more absurd than the last, to provoke genuine disbelief and laughter. What Clapboard’s taxonomy would classify as FORMAT#12 — Parody or Borrowed Format — this approach leverages the audience’s familiarity with prank entertainment to make a utility-driven proposition for Purolator filters engaging, relatable, and above all memorable. The execution sidesteps the tropes of technical demonstration or abstraction and instead trusts the naturalistic comedic tension between customers and service professionals to reinforce the promise that nothing unwanted makes it past a Purolator filter. All content anchors on the landing site NothingGetsByUs.com, which houses the video asset responsible for engaging over 112,000 viewers, pairing mass visibility with provocative brand storytelling. For a category defined by rational claims and commodity competition, the use of humor and the borrowed format not only humanizes the brand but subversively reframes vigilance and reliability as qualities customers can experience—rather than simply believe. Purolator’s tagline threads the campaign, embedding the core product message organically in the unfolding action and audience reactions without overt product placement, and the microsite further connects the experiential moment to a broader content ecosystem. The campaign earns 58/100 in Clapboard’s global creative archive. This work matters because it demonstrates that even within the automotive maintenance sector—a space notably risk-averse in its communications—format agility and genre play can create both brand distinction and emotional salience when executed with strategic clarity.