Coca-Cola's latest holiday campaign — a full generative AI-produced version of its iconic “Holidays Are Coming” advertisement — has triggered significant backlash from viewers and creative professionals alike. The 2025 spot, created in collaboration with AI studios such as Silverside AI and Secret Level, utilised over 70,000 AI-generated video clips and reportedly involved a reduced human workforce compared to previous years.
Despite its ambition, many viewers expressed disappointment, describing it as visually inconsistent, emotionally hollow, and lacking the nostalgic warmth that the brand's holiday ads are known for. Comments ranged from “soulless” and “creepy dystopian nightmare” to blunt refusals:
“This is disgusting. You're a multi-BILLION dollar company. Pay REAL animators.”
What Went Wrong
Several core issues emerged in the public response:
Emotional disconnect & nostalgia loss: The previous versions of the ad leveraged live-action imagery, human actors, and a strong sense of holiday tradition. The AI variant, while visually competent in places, was perceived as cold and lacking that human touch. One marketing professor noted that while Coca-Cola emphasised technology, they neglected the “emotional resonance” central to the brand.
Brand heritage mismatch: Loyal audiences were unsettled by the absence or minimised presence of familiar elements—such as the traditional Santa figure—and the shift to a fully AI-rendered world of trucks, polar bears and stylised visuals. As one user wrote, “You killed the magic.”
Ethical & creative concerns: Beyond the ad itself, many in the creative industry flagged long-term implications: job displacement for human artists and animators, diminished creative craftsmanship, and the risk of brands opting for cheaper, faster AI content at the expense of quality.
Coca-Cola's Response and Strategy
The company stands by the campaign, positioning it as an innovation in storytelling. According to Pratik Thakar, Coca-Cola's Global VP for Generative AI, the project reflects a “transformational leap” in creative production—one that enables faster localisation, cost-efficiency, and broad creative scale. The brand emphasised that the campaign fused human creativity with AI tools, signalling that this direction isn't a retreat from human artistry but a re-imagining of it.
Why It Matters for Brands & Creatives
The backlash highlights several important intersections in contemporary marketing:
Balance of technology and emotion: Even advanced AI visuals may struggle to replicate the warmth and significance that humans perceive in storytelling—especially for legacy brands associated with strong emotional ties.
Risk to brand identity: For Coca-Cola, whose holiday ads are part of cultural tradition, shifting to fully AI-generated production risked alienating the very audience it aimed to uplift.
Creative labour & industry concerns: The campaign reignited debates about the role of human artists in the age of generative AI. While cost-savings and productivity are appealing to corporations, many creators view such moves as eroding craftsmanship and reducing meaningful employment in creative fields.
Consumer perception: Ultimately, most viewers judge advertisements by their capacity to evoke feeling and credibility. When an ad appears too synthetic or detached, brand trust and emotional impact can suffer—even if technically competent.
Final Thoughts
Coca-Cola's move to deploy an entirely AI-generated holiday ad is a bold statement of technological ambition—but one that clearly mis-fired in the court of public sentiment. It serves as a cautionary tale: in a creative field where emotion, nostalgia and authenticity count for so much, technology alone may not be enough. Brands seeking to blend AI with tradition must tread carefully if they hope to retain not just visibility, but genuine audience connection.