UPDATE 02/12/2025: You can now watch this blog as a video on YouTube or via the link below.
Now that we’ve taken down our rubber bats, skeletons and pumpkins, it’s time to get out the tinsel, fake snow, and head up to the loft to pull down the Christmas tree. It’s no secret that companies are ready to give the green light to this year’s Christmas marketing material, with many superstores such as John Lewis and Sainsbury’s already appearing on our televisions and in online ads with their spin on what Christmas means. However, one fallen king of the Christmas ad game who got backlash for its festive film in 2024 was soft drink powerhouse Coca-Cola, which has seemingly not learned from its mistakes last year!
What’s the AI-dea?!
In 2024, Coca-Cola released the world’s first AI-generated film on broadcast media. This was ultimately met with a negative response, claiming that Coca-Cola is replacing creatives in the film industry with Artificial Intelligence. Now the company is embracing generative AI again, having released the second Christmas Advert utilising this technology for 2025. See the full advert below.
Global Vice President and Head of Generative AI at Coca-Cola (yes, that’s an ACTUAL job role) has said, “Last year we set a global milestone with the world’s first entirely GenAI-created film on broadcast media — a bold leap that broke new ground. This year’s campaign is another proof point in our journey of emerging technology to rethink how we create and scale content.”. This new advert is reminiscent of past Coca-Cola ads, featuring the iconic red truck driving along snow-covered roads, with animals gazing up in wonder as it passes.
As AI videos go, it is definitely an improvement on last year’s. The removal of AI people (except Santa) from 2025’s advert, replaced by cute animals, was a smart move by Coca-Cola, as the effects of the uncanny valley loomed over audiences last year, making most viewers question why the advert didn’t “feel right”. With AIGen software such as OpenAI’s Sora 2 model opening up the entry level for text-to-video content creation, we are questioning whether “that cat really IS playing a trumpet in front of his neighbour’s house at 3 am” more than ever.
Should Coca-Cola be on the naughty list?
So, is Coca-Cola in the wrong for putting out a second advert after last year’s marketing mare? In short, they probably shouldn’t have. However, as the old saying goes, “any publicity is good publicity” (a phrase that we don’t entirely agree with!). Coca-Cola firmly believes that what they are doing is harmless and justified and that they are pioneering the future of AI filmmaking in mainstream media. One commenter on YouTube posted, “…Can’t you just make a nice commercial without AI? Is that really too much to ask for? The 1995 ad is the original feeling of Christmas for me. This is everything that Christmas shouldn’t be. Generic AI slop”.
No matter what stance you have on this advert, there is one undeniable feeling that most people will have: It just doesn’t feel Christmassy. This is, of course, an opinion, but it’s not a coincidence that so many people have the same thoughts. The moment you get told that it is AI-generated, something suddenly changes, as if a switch has been flipped in your head. The warm, fuzzy animals seem cold and calculated, as if a computer had put them in there, saying, “statistically, that’s what the humans would like”.
How much of the advert is AI-generated?
The Head of Generative AI at Coca-Cola said that they used 100% GenAI to make the advert, but does that take into account more than what we see on the screen? We do not doubt that AI created the final advert we see on the screen; the imagery and animation are entirely within AI’s wheelhouse. However, what about all the steps before that? When producing a traditional advert, hitting record on the camera is one of the last things you’ll be doing. Even a 30-second TV advert requires months of planning to get right. Did AI come up with the concept of having anthropomorphic animals replacing humans, or was there an actual person who made that decision? Did AI provide a rough copy of the storyboard, or did AI create the scenes and how they should be staged? Well, fortunately, Coca-Cola answered some of these questions in their behind-the-scenes video released earlier this week.
In the video, it talks about how a small team at Coca-Cola tested a variety of styles, including a documentary look, AI-generated 2D and a stop-motion animated look. What the team settled on was a hyper-realistic look that played up the animals’ expressiveness. The process for this project started with generating still images, which serve as the storyboard stage of a traditional advert. From there, the photos are brought to life using generative video software. The small team of 5 AI specialists and creatives was then tasked with refining over 70,000 AI-generated pieces of media to get the advert looking exactly how they wanted. To handle the 70,000 clips generated, Coca-Cola relied on KlingAI, Veo 3, Luma AI, and Sora, among others.
Is traditional filmmaking the Ghost of Christmas Past?
The closest thing to traditional filmmaking came at the end of production, with minor colour corrections and lighting changes. The scary thing about all of this? The advert was created in 30 days. At the end of their behind-the-scenes video, the Coca-Cola spokesperson (and yes, they are AI-generated too…) says, “Combining human creativity with AI to turbo charge expression and imagination – giving creatives more freedom and speed and control than ever before.” And what they have said is partially true.
To animate a full advert on this scale—from initial storyboard sketches to rendering individual fur on the animals—would take months, so AI has undoubtedly massively reduced production time. However, has it truly freed up artists’ limitations with the skills to create magical scenes? We don’t think so. After working on our 2025 animated advert for Darlington College earlier this year, we spent a month problem-solving to get the results we needed. We relied on skilled artists to create puppets, props and work on post-production to bring a fabricated world to life. To see the lengths we went to check out the full behind-the-scenes video on our YouTube channel.
So, will Coca-Cola run a third AI-generated advert in 2026? Who knows, but with advances in AI technology and software such as Sora, we may not even realise it isn’t made by humans by Christmas next year.