Everything indicates that the negative reaction to use of AI in Coca-Cola Christmas ad It has set a precedent… but it has not discouraged large corporations. MacDonald’s has made its own greeting with synthetic images and the reaction has been so overwhelmingly negative that the company has decided to remove the spot from social networks. Once again, issues such as creativity, aesthetics, profitability over ethics and, above all, what majority reactions they are generating are put on the table.
What has happened? McDonald’s Netherlands has withdrawn its Christmas campaign generated entirely with artificial intelligence after facing a avalanche of criticism on social networks (and after being forced to disconnect comments on their profiles). The advertisement, ironically titled “It’s the most terrible time of the year”, is a perversion of the classic Christmas carols, and showed disasters with a festive atmosphere: traffic jams in which Santa Claus is involved, rebellious fir trees, unpalatable family members… the whole pack of suffering of these dates, to remind us that at least we have McDonald’s left.
The problem. As happened with Coca-Cola, the problem is twofold. Aesthetically, the result is spooky.: Disturbing physics, expressionless faces, slapstick humor taken to the extreme because of that strange elastic and surreal violence of the AI. But above all, it makes viewers and critics wonder about the ethical legitimacy of this type of operationswhich completely dispense with human capital to produce more and faster. We are facing the first steps of an experimentone that corporations will put into full gear as soon as public rejection eases.
Who has done it. The burger brand had entrusted production to the Californian duo MAMA (Mark Potoka and Matt Starr Spice), together with the AI division The Gardening.club of the studio The Sweetshop. In a post that has since been deleted, the directors defended their work: The announcement required “seven intense weeks” of work, investing in it “more hours than in traditional production. Their central argument: “AI didn’t do it. We did it.”
The controversy with Coca-Cola. The McDonald’s disaster represents the year’s second major Christmas controversy involving AI-generated advertising. A month ago Coca-Cola ignited a similar debate by launching its remake of the iconic 1995 ‘Holidays Are Coming’ spot, this time produced using generative artificial intelligence and starring animals… after the poor reception that a spot with the same concept but starring people had in 2024. The Atlanta multinational hired three specialized studios (Secret Level, Silverside AI and Wild Card), but the reaction from the public and critics was devastating.
A reflection on that rejection, in reference to the 2024 ad with non-existent humans: Tim Halloran, who worked for a decade in Coca-Cola’s brand management division, stated that the campaign constituted “a violation of the brand promise” of Coca-Cola since, “for years, the core of that brand has been the idea of authenticity.”
Toys R Us too. Ahead of Coca-Cola’s first spot, in June 2024, Toys R Us debuted “the first commercial ad created with Sora,” OpenAI’s text-to-video tool. The one-minute spot narrated the origins of the company through its founder Charles Lazarus, combining images of the boy who would end up creating the store with the mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe in completely synthetic sequences. The industry reaction was almost unanimouswith people like Joe Russo stating in X that the ad It was “shit”. The impact on brand perception was measured Marketing-Interactivedocumenting negative reactions from 53.4% of the spot’s viewers.
The problem of authenticity. Behind the rejection of these ads there is a deeper problem than mere poor technical execution. In December 2024, NielsenIQ published research that revealed how viewers cognitively processed AI-generated advertising, and the result was not very promising: consumers consistently rated these contents as “annoying,” “boring,” and “confusing,” even when the technical quality was high.
Neeraj Arora, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explained why the rejection is particularly acute in the Christmas context, with special attention to the Coca-Cola spot: “The holidays are a time of connection, of community, of coming together with family, and that’s a big part of what the holidays are about. But when you introduce AI into the mix, it doesn’t fit: it doesn’t fit with the festive moment, but also, to a certain degree, it doesn’t fit with Coca-Cola and what the brand stands for.” Christmas, traditionally a space of emotional authenticity, collides head-on with the synthetic nature of AI.
Controversial results. The cases of McDonald’s and Coca-Cola illustrate a contradictory reality: the speed of production and cost savings that AI promises do not necessarily compensate for the loss of emotional connection with audiences. The consumers are developing rapidly the ability to identify synthetic content, and their immediate reaction is rejection.
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