Bringing GenAI creativity to life with IAMS pet food

IAMS wanted to inspire pet adoption in a way people wouldn’t forget. So, collaborating closely with IAMS' creative agency, Adam&EveDDB, we helped build a GenAI video tool that transformed personal stories into emotionally charged movie trailers. Crafted by users, powered by their prompts, and designed to win hearts. Over 8,500 videos created in less than 2 months.

Our challenge

Building on a viral trend of convincing loved ones to adopt pets through homemade PowerPoints, Mars pet food brand IAMS saw an opportunity. Could we make that even more personal, persuasive, and fun? In partnership with IAMS, creative agency Adam&EveDDB, and Google, we set out to reimagine what GenAI could do in the hands of everyday users.

“Our ambition? Supercharge emotional impact through personalized GenAI movie trailer creation.”

Liz Salway

Senior Director, Marketing Consulting, Empathy Lab

Our approach

To bring this creative concept to life, we assembled a cross-functional team of front-end designers and back-end engineers, collaborating closely with Adam&EveDDB. Our goal was to make GenAI video generation accessible, playful, and brand-safe, all at scale. That meant thoughtful prompt engineering, smart storyboarding, and careful moderation to handle real-world diversity across users, pets, and settings. We ensured scenes felt personal and relevant, while keeping the tone emotionally rich and fully on-brand.

We wanted to push the creative boundaries of what’s possible with generative video. While AI-generated ads aren’t new, enabling anyone to generate one themselves, with this level of polish and impact, was something fresh.

Our solution

We built “I Want a Puppy/Kitten”: a playful, personalised GenAI experience designed to tug at heartstrings and drive engagement.

Users are invited to fill out a short questionnaire about the person they’re trying to convince, from their location and lifestyle to their favourite film genres. Then, using Google’s Veo 2 video model and ElevenLabs for voiceover, the platform creates a 90-second cinematic trailer tailored to that audience.

The tool was delivered as a fully responsive mobile web app, backed by cloud-native architecture and powered by Google Cloud’s GenAI stack. We blended pre-generated and real-time elements to create a rich, believable experience with minimal load times and low hallucination risk. All while keeping content moderated and on-message using Gemini-powered filters.
From script to screen, every step was highly personalized, and fine-tuned to spark emotion, prompt smiles and build deeper brand affinity for IAMS.

Our impact

The campaign proved that personalised GenAI experiences don’t just entertain: they build real emotional connection. The tool was widely shared, quickly adopted, and positioned IAMS at the forefront of GenAI-led brand storytelling.

Our work

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What we do

Marketing

Commerce

Loyalty