Coca-Cola's new ad was made using AI but lacks the fizz

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola has doubled down on its use of generative AI for its holiday advertising — and once again, the results are more unsettling than heartwarming. After facing backlash last year for airing awkward AI-generated Christmas commercials with distorted faces and gliding truck wheels, the brand has returned with another AI-powered “Holidays Are Coming” campaign that looks even more visually inconsistent.

This year’s ad tries to avoid the pitfalls of generating lifelike humans by featuring a cast of animals instead — polar bears, pandas, and a sloth. But the results are hardly festive. The characters shift between semi-realistic and cartoonish styles, moving awkwardly as if they were cutouts animated in a rush rather than full 3D renders. The overall effect feels cheap and disjointed, especially when compared to what modern tools like OpenAI’s Sora 2 or Google’s Veo 3 are capable of producing.

The only visible improvement? The wheels on Coca-Cola’s iconic red trucks actually rotate this time instead of sliding unrealistically across snowy roads. According to The Wall Street Journal, the ad was produced in partnership with Silverside and Secret Level — the same AI studios behind last year’s campaigns.

Coca-Cola declined to reveal how much the new campaign cost but confirmed that about 100 people worked on it, including five AI specialists from Silverside who generated and refined over 70,000 AI clips. Despite similar staffing numbers to traditional productions, the company claims the AI process was significantly faster and cheaper. “Before, we would start a project a year in advance,” said Manolo Arroyo, Coca-Cola’s Chief Marketing Officer. “Now, you can get it done in around a month.”

The campaign lands at a time when brands are increasingly using AI to cut production time and costs — often at the expense of creative quality. Google also launched its first fully AI-generated ad this year, arguing that most consumers “don’t really care” how an ad is made. But Coca-Cola’s continued push into AI-generated marketing, even after criticism over previous campaigns — including one that invented a fake J.G. Ballard book — suggests the company is prioritising speed and savings over craft.

The result: another AI holiday ad that feels cold and soulless, missing the warmth that made Coca-Cola’s Christmas campaigns iconic in the first place.