Coca-Cola Doubles Down on AI Holiday Advertising Despite Backlash
20 Sources
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The Worst Thing About Coca-Cola's Holiday Ad Isn't the AI
The holiday season may just be beginning, but hating on AI is always in season. Enter a new holiday-themed ad from Coca-Cola that's provoking blowback for its use of generative AI to bring its scenes to life - or at least, that's what it attempted to do. The commercial is pretty basic. A Coca-Cola
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Coca-Cola's new AI holiday ad is a sloppy eyesore
Coca-Cola is once again using generative AI to reimagine its classic Coke caravan holiday commercials, and in doing so, killing some of the festive joy you have for the brand. After receiving backlash for airing three AI-generated holiday commercials last year that featured gliding wheels and
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Coca-Cola faces backlash again for missing the spirit of the holidays with another AI-slop ad
Despite technical gains, the ad lacks emotional warmth and feels more like an imitation of nostalgia than the real thing When Coca-Cola rolled out its 2024 holiday ad I wrote that the familiar "Holidays Are Coming" trucks had become a soulless and creepy dystopian nightmare made by AI. The
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Coca-Cola created another AI holiday ad
Coca-Cola practically invented Santa Claus as we know him today. Credit: Coca-Cola / Secret Level Coca-Cola has an indelible connection to the holidays here in the United States. The company's 1930s portraits of Santa Claus helped popularize the character as we know him today, and Coca-Cola
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Generative AI Is Here to Ruin Christmas
Despite the controversy surrounding its use of generative AI to create a trio of Christmas advertisements last year, Coca-Cola has once again returned to the world's driest well, churning out yet another terrible AI-generated advertisement. Coca-Cola's iconic annual Christmas advertising campaigns
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I compared Coca-Cola's AI Christmas ads, and it's startling how far AI video has come
We pick apart the two ads to find out how AI-generated video has improved over the last year. Coca-Cola has just released its latest Christmas ad (above) and just like last year's effort, it's deployed a slew of generative-AI tools to create it. A nod to Coca-Cola's famous 1995 Christmas ad that
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Coke's New AI-Generated Ad Required 100 Staff and 70,000 AI-Generated Clips, and It Still Looks Like Garbage
Coca-Cola is back with another series of AI-generated ads to herald the holidays -- and they look just as bad as they did last year. The new ad campaign, titled the "Holidays Are Coming," is a callback to the company's 1995 commercial of the same name, and was made in collaboration with the AI
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Coca-Cola's AI-generated Christmas ad sparks backlash (again)
The soda brand's nostalgic hits are a thing of the past as Coca-Cola makes AI slop a new festive tradition. Coca-Cola's annual Christmas advert is AI-generated this year. Again. Last year, the company ignited the worst kind of festive furore by leaning into artificial intelligence for its
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Coca-Cola's new AI-generated Christmas ad shows why generative video still struggles with realism
Coca-Cola has released a new AI-generated Christmas campaign titled "Holidays Are Coming," featuring animated critters to reimagine its classic holiday commercials. The company produced the ad with AI studios Silverside and Secret Level after backlash from 2024 efforts, aiming for faster and
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Why these Coca-Cola's holiday ads are causing a stir - again
Coca-Cola is the latest company to release an AI-generated ad and now the company is getting some backlash for it online. Coca-Cola released a set of new holiday ads - and two created with generative AI are bubbling up discussion on social media. The pair of ads that utilize artificial
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Coca-Cola Releases Another AI-Generated Holiday Ad, Despite Last Year's Backlash
On Nov. 3, Coca-Cola released its latest "Holidays Are Coming" ads on YouTube, and for the second year in a row, some of them are generated with artificial intelligence. The pair of commercials look similar to animated films but were created by two "AI studios" -- Silverside and Secret Level -- and
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Coca-Cola once again uses generative AI to create its Christmas advert
In an era where there's a conversation every day about whether generative AI is going to be good or bad for the world, big companies refusing to hire real artists as a computer can drum up something "just as good," is understandably going to drum up controversy. Coca-Cola saw that effect in 2024,
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Man Who Created AI Holiday Coke Ad Says It Took More Creativity Than You Realize
Coca-Cola Is Trying Another AI Holiday Ad. Executives Say This Time Is Different This year's Coca-Cola's AI ad-drop was supposed to be different. Different than last year's bashing, what with smoother tech. Different from last year's controversy, what with more consumer acceptance. The critics,
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Devastating graphic shows just how bad the Coca-Cola Christmas ad really is
The Coca-Cola AI Christmas advert can be studied as an example of what happens when a company risks decades of hard-won brand equity through the use of nascent tech that's still not up to the job to try to save a few bucks. Despite the noisy backlash against last year's rudimentary effort,
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Coca-Cola Is Trying Another AI Holiday Ad. Executives Say This Time Is Different
Warner Bros. Keeps Taking a Beating That the Joker Would Be Proud Of For a few weeks last November, no villain loomed larger over Madison Avenue and social media that polices it than Coca-Cola. The company's "Holidays Are Coming" spot, an homage to a classic 1995 ad, featured the original's
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Coca-Cola's AI ad just ruined Christmas... again
One AI-generated Christmas ad could have be brushed off as a novelty experiment. With two in a two in a row, Coca-Cola is making AI slop a new festive tradition. Despite the backlash last year (or because of it?), the soft drinks giant has again decided to start the season with an AI-generated
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Coca-Cola Sparks Backlash With New, Entirely AI-Generated Holiday 2025 Ad, Insists 'The Genie Is Out of the Bottle, and You're Not Going to Put It Back In' - IGN
Coca-Cola has sparked a backlash with its new, entirely AI-generated Holiday 2025 ad, but has insisted "the genie is out of the bottle, and you're not going to put it back in." The advert, below, was created by Los Angeles-based AI studio Secret Level, and features the trademark Coca-Cola trucks,
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Coca-Cola slammed again for 'soulless' AI-generated Christmas ad - VnExpress International
On Monday, the company unveiled its new AI-generated ad featuring anthropomorphic animals watching red Coca-Cola trucks as they pass through various locales. The one-minute spot concludes with Santa, the only human character, stepping out of one of the trucks, Forbes reported. Despite hopes for a
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Coca-Cola reignites AI ad debate with new holiday campaign | Advertising | Campaign India
A new version of the classic 'Holidays Are Coming' reinforces the brand's commitment to generative tech and storytelling. Coca-Cola's holiday trucks are back -- and so is the backlash. A year after its first AI-driven Christmas ad was slammed online, the company has rolled out another one,
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Coca-Cola's new ad: GenAI scaling content or diluting creative value?
HIGHLIGHTS Coca-Cola doubles down on AI despite global backlash Inside Coca-Cola's fast-tracked AI holiday campaign process How AI is reshaping global ad production timelines The red trucks are back - and so is the algorithm behind them. For the second year in a row, Coca-Cola's "Holidays Are
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Coca-Cola releases another AI-generated holiday commercial for 2025, featuring animated animals and the iconic red trucks. Despite criticism from creative professionals and mixed public reception, the company continues embracing generative AI for cost efficiency and faster production.
Coca-Cola's Continued AI Experiment
Coca-Cola has released its second consecutive AI-generated holiday advertisement, once again recreating its iconic 1995 "Holidays Are Coming" commercial featuring the beloved red truck caravan. The 2025 campaign represents a strategic pivot from last year's approach, focusing on animated animals rather than human characters to avoid the uncanny valley effect that plagued the previous iteration
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Source: Digit
The new 60-second advertisement features a diverse cast of creatures including polar bears, pandas, sloths, seals, and various woodland animals watching the illuminated Coca-Cola trucks wind through snowy landscapes. Created in partnership with AI studios Silverside and Secret Level, the same companies behind last year's controversial campaign, the ad attempts to capture the nostalgic magic of the original while leveraging cutting-edge generative AI technology
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Source: THR
Technical Improvements and Persistent Issues
From a technical standpoint, the 2025 advertisement shows marked improvements over its predecessor. The most notable enhancement is the realistic rotation of truck wheels, addressing one of the most criticized aspects of the 2024 version where wheels appeared to glide statically across snow-covered roads
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. The lighting and environmental coherence have also improved, reflecting the rapid advancement in AI video generation technology over the past year.However, significant visual inconsistencies remain apparent throughout the advertisement. The production switches between attempted photorealism and cartoonish aesthetics without establishing a cohesive visual language. Animals move unnaturally, resembling "flat images that have been sloppily animated rather than rigged 3D models," according to technical analysis
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. The fur texturing on animals lacks consistency, with detail degrading toward the back of creatures, and facial expressions appear overexaggerated with perfectly circular surprised expressions.
Source: Futurism
Production Economics and Industry Impact
The campaign's production timeline reveals the economic incentives driving Coca-Cola's AI adoption. Chief Marketing Officer Manolo Arroyo disclosed that traditional holiday campaigns previously required year-long production schedules, while the AI-generated version was completed in approximately one month
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. The project involved around 100 people, comparable to traditional productions, but included five dedicated "AI specialists" who refined over 70,000 AI video clips.Secret Level founder Jason Zada emphasized the human artistry involved, noting that the process included "hand drawing the original characters" and "frame-by-frame animation in certain parts"
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. The studio claims to "prompt very ethically" to avoid appropriating specific artists' styles, though this assertion has done little to quell criticism from creative professionals.Related Stories
Creative Community Backlash
The advertisement has reignited fierce debate within the creative industry about AI's role in advertising and content creation. Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch previously criticized Coca-Cola's AI approach, stating the company "is 'red' because it's made from the blood of out-of-work artists"
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. This sentiment reflects broader concerns about generative AI's impact on employment opportunities for directors, producers, artists, visual effects specialists, and actors.Critics argue that despite technical improvements, the advertisement lacks the emotional warmth and human connection that made the original 1995 spot memorable. The consensus among detractors is that the AI version feels like "an imitation of nostalgia instead of nostalgia itself"
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, fundamentally missing the holiday magic that has made Coca-Cola's Christmas campaigns cultural touchstones.Consumer Reception and Market Strategy
Despite vocal criticism from creative professionals, Coca-Cola reports positive consumer testing results. Pratik Thakar, Global Vice President & Head of Generative AI at Coca-Cola, stated that last year's AI campaign "performed exceptionally well and was a success with customers"
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. The company maintains that when consumers viewed the advertisement without knowledge of its AI origins, it tested as "one of the best testing ads in a very, very long time."The campaign includes proper AI disclosure labeling at the beginning of the video, addressing transparency concerns raised by media literacy advocates
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. This disclosure represents a best practice in an era where AI-generated content is becoming increasingly indistinguishable from human-created material, though it has not prevented the backlash from creative communities.References
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