Coca-Cola Made an AI Christmas Ad. The Internet Hated It.
What the backlash against Coca-Cola's AI holiday campaign reveals about creativity, trust, and the limits of automation
In November 2024, Coca-Cola released three AI-generated holiday commercials. They were remakes of the company's iconic 1995 "Holidays Are Coming" campaign: the one with the red trucks rolling through snow-covered towns, the one that had been synonymous with Christmas for three decades.
The ads were created by three AI studios: Secret Level, Silverside AI, and Wild Card, using multiple generative AI models. They were tagged with the label "Created by Real Magic AI." Before release, they were tested using System1's ad testing methodology and received a perfect score of 5.9.
Then they were released to the public. And the internet decided they were soulless.
What Went Wrong
The backlash was swift and visceral. Critics called the ads "devoid of any actual creativity." Alex Hirsch, creator of Disney's Gravity Falls, wrote that Coca-Cola is "red because it's made from the blood of out-of-work artists." The comment resonated because it articulated something people felt but hadn't quite said: this wasn't just a creative choice, it was a statement about whose labour the company valued.
The core criticism wasn't that the ads looked bad. Technically, they were competent. It was that they felt wrong. The original 1995 ad worked because it was made by humans who understood what Christmas felt like. The AI version had the visual elements but not the emotional truth. It was a simulacrum of nostalgia rather than the thing itself.
The Uncanny Valley of Advertising
There's a concept in robotics called the uncanny valley: the point at which a human-like robot becomes close enough to human to feel deeply unsettling rather than charming. Something similar seems to apply to AI-generated advertising.
When AI creates something clearly artificial, a stylised illustration or an abstract animation, audiences accept it. When AI creates something that's trying to replicate human emotional experience and nearly succeeds, the near-miss becomes disturbing. The Coca-Cola ads fell into this valley. They had the shape of emotional advertising without the substance.
This is a problem that better AI won't necessarily solve. The issue isn't technical quality. It's authenticity. Audiences can sense, even if they can't articulate, whether something was made by someone who cared about it.
Coca-Cola's Response
Coca-Cola stated it was "exploring new ways to connect with consumers" through a "collaboration of human storytellers and the power of generative AI," emphasising its commitment to "human creativity and technology."
The framing is telling. The company positioned the ads as a collaboration rather than a replacement. But the backlash suggests audiences weren't convinced. The question isn't whether AI was involved. It's whether human care and intention were present in the final product.
What This Means for Creative Work
The Coca-Cola controversy is a data point, not a verdict. AI will continue to be used in advertising. The question is how, and to what end.
The brands that will navigate this well are those that use AI as a tool in service of human creative vision: to accelerate production, explore variations, handle the mechanical parts of the process, while keeping human judgment, taste, and emotional intelligence at the centre of creative decisions.
The brands that will struggle are those that use AI as a cost-cutting measure dressed up as innovation. Audiences are sophisticated. They know when they're being given something made with care and when they're being given something made with efficiency. The difference matters enormously.
Creativity is not a production problem. It's a human problem. And no amount of compute solves a human problem.
