KLM Royal Dutch Airlines won the hearts and minds of people around the world on Tuesday with a video that showed an adorable beagle sniffing items left behind on an aircraft and returning them to their owners while they were trying to depart Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.
The dog – which wore a cute, blue jacket bearing the airline’s logo – brought delight to a child, for instance, when it returned a lost stuffed animal.
Everyone loves a good ending story – especially one involving a dog, so not surprisingly the video went viral. It had been watched more than 1.8 million times by Wednesday, Time magazine reported yesterday. TravelUpdate.com’s check a few minutes ago shows that it had been watched 3.1 million times.
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But in the end, the truth came out: the cute beagle was simply a marketing vehicle hired for an ad.
“The world welcomed the adorable (if somewhat implausible) service with glee — only to learn on Wednesday that the dog in the ad isn’t affiliated with the airline at all. It only appeared for marketing purposes,” Mashable’s story told us.
Mashable headlined its story on Wednesday, “We Can’t Trust Anyone, Not Even the Puppy in That KLM Airlines Video.”
Readers: Wouldn’t it be nice if losing things during our travels was this easy?
