• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, May 20, 2011

Do brands continue to miss marketing opportunities around what appears as family, homespun videos uploaded to YouTube that share a moment evoking an emotional response? The video seems staged, but an ad agency executive confirms the video is user-generated. The video, which seems like an exercise in branding, created the perfect product placement clip.

For those who missed the reports running on "Good Morning America" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live," A YouTube video racking up more than 8.5 million views tells the mystery of an empty bag of cat treats and two dogs, Macy and Denver.

The Purina brand took the opportunity to capitalize on the millions of views, targeting the "Guilty Denver" clip with advertising. But this telling video isn't the only dog to provoke a response. On YouTube, site visitors will find alternative endings to the Guilty Denver video produced and uploaded by others, as well as a variety of poodles and pooches.

YouTube, known for its entertaining pet-lover videos showing dogs on skateboards or cats falling from high-above ledges and landing on their feet, could provide brands with major marketing opportunities. But the one thing the Guilty Denver video offers up that others don't -- the Purina brand cat treat package -- appears to have been used as a prop.

It's about making spots believable. Purina's latest Fancy Feast promotion focused on hopeless devotion, capitalizing on Britain's royal wedding. A series of TV spots, which began running during the wedding, track a young couple's engagement, wedding and life after. The initial spot, called The Engagement, created buzz.

The ad agency Ogilvy ran back-end support and search engine marketing, supporting the Purina Fancy Feast video during the wedding and the following few days. It leveraged the buzz and searches on engines around the royal wedding.

Keywords in the search campaign included "royal wedding," The ad doesn't read "Click here for Royal Wedding ad content," but rather "Have wedding fever, check out ... " It provided searchers with information on wedding-related content that led to a landing page on YouTube. The call to action for the ad is: "click here to check out ... ," or "come watch the Fancy Feast video."

The search campaign complemented the TV spot and YouTube video, but also provided an opportunity to link back to Facebook from the search channel.