"It's the real thing'.... or is it? For decades, authenticity has been the message at the heart of Coca-Cola's branding. Even today, it's tagline is 'Real magic'. But Christmas 2024 marks a major departure. The brand's taken the risky, and frankly bizarre, move of remaking its world-famous and much-loved 'Holidays are Coming' advert using artificial intelligence. And people are appalled.
Originally launched in 1995, Holidays are Coming remains close to the top in our pick of the best Christmas adverts of all time. Featuring a convoy of Coca-Cola trucks in a snowy landscape, and backed up with physical Coca-Cola truck tours, the advert has become so synonymous with Christmas that some say the season truly begins when they hear that Kingdom Choir soundtrack. So why risk ruining that with a cheap and tacky remake?
Any ad campaign will have its detractors, but it's quite rare to see an advert posted by a major brand on YouTube in which almost every comment is negative – and in many cases very negative.
"Always the real thing, OH the IRONY!" one person wrote. "This is absolutely destroying the nostalgia this ad once had," someone else wrote. "There is nothing magic about this slop," was another comment. Alex Hirsch, creator of the Disney series Gravity Falls wrote on X: “FUN FACT: @CocaCola is ‘red’ because it’s made from the blood of out-of-work artists!"
Some initially assumed the ad to be fake until they saw it posted by official Coca-Cola channels. Others see an opportunity for rivals. "Pepsi, now's your chance to make a live action ad bashing on coke for using AI," one person suggested on YouTube. And I have to admit that would be a better way to troll Coca-Cola than Pepsi's recent 'Undercover Cups' campaign.
Coca-Cola says it decided to remake the Holidays are Coming ad using AI to update it “to today’s times” (perhaps we could add 'on today's budgets'?). According to Forbes, the campaign involved three AI studios: Secret Level, Silverside AI and Wild Card using four different generative AI models.
But even Silverside AI’s AI Developer Chris Barber was apparently keen to distance his company from the ad that's circulating online. He wrote on X that each studio created a different version and that the one being criticised wasn't his.
Customers are disappointed in international markets too. "It's lost its emotion. AI still isn't good enough to deliver," one person responded in the comments on the Instagram post in Brazil above. "You know the audiovisual industry is over when a multi-million dollar company is using artificial intelligence for a flagship Christmas campaign" someone else wrote about the ad on X.
AI imagery is everywhere, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. But this is Coca-Cola – and one of its most iconic campaigns. It seems like such an unnecessary and uncreative use of AI. No matter how massively AI video has improved in recent months, it still looks weird (and cheap). The shots of the dog and the polar bear in the new Coca-Cola Christmas ad look like experimental test footage from an early Meta Movie Gen research paper. If this is good enough for one of the world's biggest drinks brands, it lowers the standard for everyone.
There are other parts of the campaign that are more interesting. There's a website where users can create their own snow globe by telling an AI Santa about a magical Christmas memory. I couldn't get it to work, but it's at least a more interesting and interactive use of AI, following on from the AI greetings cards stunt last year.
Coca-Cola's also repeating last year's 'Anyone can be Santa' message. Although, for someone who grew up during the 'stranger danger' panic of the 1980s, the poster design below with shadowy Santas lurking behind the tagline looks more like a public safety ad than a message about spreading Christmas joy.
But the AI-generated Holidays are Coming advert feels like a step too far, especially when the original was such an iconic asset for Coca-Cola. Until now, major brands have generally steered clear of using AI-generated visuals as finished content. The few examples of AI-generated ads that we've seen have been creepy (see the terrible Toys R Us brand film), and have generated public backlashes.
Brands as diverse as Lego, the Tedeschi Trucks Band and Transport for Ireland have been 'AI shamed' in recent months, so Coca-Cola should have easily been able to see what kind of reaction this piece would generate. The only logical explanation would be that it's intentionally courting controversy to get engagement, but that seems like a poor move too. How can Coca-Cola now expect to be seen as 'the real thing' with an 'AI-generated' disclaimer on its ads?
