Yeti and Space Alien Debate the Reality of Bubba Burgers

Creature comedy, well done

If advanced beings from distant galaxies battled fearsome yetis to the death, which would win?

Alas, Bubba Burger doesn’t answer that question in the :30 below. Instead, Snowy and ET act kind of bored with each other as they hype the frozen meat treat.

Abominable loves the stuff! What better endorsement could there be?

As for the tagline “You Bubba Believe It,” that sounds like something I might write. On a Bubba bad day.

Otherwise, this is superior stuff lensed by Chris Woods, who directed via production house Spang TV.

“Bubba burgers are simple, which is exactly why they’re so good,” says Dustin Artz, co-founder of Familiar Creatures, the aptly-named agency that developed the campaign. “And in a world that’s full of fillers and flavor boosters, we just kept thinking about how strange it is that they’ve stayed, well, the opposite.”

“Enlisting some unbelievable characters to lean into that strangeness felt like a fun, unique way to hammer the point home and get people talking.”

After choosing that approach, the team strove to craft a storyline about world-weary roommates that viewers could relate to, even though its stars were heavily costumed as fantastical beings that almost certainly don’t exist (though in these absurd times, can we really be sure?)

“We did a full day of makeup testing prior to the shoot, which actually ended up coming in handy,” agency copywriter Ben Englander tells Muse. “Little details like the yeti’s face shape and fur paint were smoothed out ahead of time to avoid grimaces in video village.”

Though AI wasn’t engaged, old-school camera trickery helped enhance the illusion.

“We used forced perspective and blue screens to make the 6-foot tall alien actor look 4-feet tall, and the 5’5″ yeti actor look 8 feet tall,” Englander says. “That’s right—the yeti actor was considerably shorter than the alien. Who’d have thunk it?”

Veteran Chuck Willis handled the edit, “Then we added VFX, like the subtle facial expressions and blinks of the alien. After making the greens and grays pop in color and smoothing out every beat of the end card, we called it a wrap.”

It was, Englander says, the kind of shoot that makes memories.

“It’s the little moments that stick with you most. Like chatting about the best spots in Atlanta with an actual alien over tacos,” he recalls. “Or watching our art director’s children stare in trepidation as two monsters moseyed about.”

Yetis have become advertising fixtures of late (especially during the frosty EOY holidays), while extraterrestrials invaded campaigns for pizza rolls, cars, tourism and more.