The Mexican soda brand’s new holiday campaign — a pair of ads straightforwardly titled “Holidays Are Coming” — once again raised eyebrows this year for the spots being created by Artificial Intelligence. A Coca-Cola winter holiday 2024 campaign (which also appeared to be generated by AI) caused backlash for that very reason.
Pratik Thakar, global vice president and head of generative AI for Coca-Cola, told TODAY.com that the ad campaign for 2025 was led by “human storytellers” who had crafted each commercial as content with a sure sense of what’s “authentic and emotionally resonant.”
“With AI and the power of this technology, Coca-Cola is bringing fans some familiar holiday entertainment alongside new tastes and traditions,” Thakar told the outlet. “Our new and updated ‘Holidays are Coming’ ads showcase that tradition and heritage with 21st-century technology – bringing together the expertise of human creativity and state-of-the-art generative AI.”
The original ads included Santa Claus cracking a Coca-Cola bottle and setting off a light-up Coca-Cola truck driving along a snowy road. The eyes of polar bears, penguins, hedgehogs, and a giant panda glisten as the Coca-Cola trucks pass by: magically illuminating Christmas trees and houses in their wake.
The runner-up shows a couple of otters in a cabin that have opened a bottle of Coca-Cola. They are then shown summoning the lit vehicles from down the highway. All kinds of animals as they pass — bunnies, meerkats, groundhogs, a seal, and a bear-shaped snowman — crane their necks for a look.
The conversation between the two ads complained about AI. One commenter referred to the ad as “soulless,” and another “lifeless,” while many argued that there was no emotional weight in the AI-generated creations, compared with Coke’s commercials of previous years.
“I miss the ads that were tear-jerkers. I want to be sobbing at all Christmas ads,” wrote one. “This look is never going to get there.”
Coca-Cola’s AI ad campaign in 2024 was also mired with backlash. Like the previous ad featuring a man undoing a Coca Cola bottle to call up a line of CocaCola trucks that light up a town, this ad last year drew flak for the lack of warmth and creativity one can expect from an example of humanity.
The AI-generated humans in the clip themselves served to make the campaign feel “like a slightly [creepy] horror movie,” said one user.
