- Coca-Cola has released a new AI-generated holiday advert for 2025, doubling down after last year’s widely criticised campaign
- The ad looks better this time, with fewer uncanny humans and improved visuals
- Despite technical gains, the ad lacks emotional warmth and feels more like an imitation of nostalgia than the real thing
When Coca-Cola rolled out its 2024 holiday ad I wrote that the familiar “Holidays Are Coming” trucks had become a soulless and creepy dystopian nightmare made by AI.
The flickering wheels, awkward lighting and uncanny humans suggested a brand chasing novelty rather than emotion. Fast forward to 2025 and the world's biggest soft drinks brand has again turned to generative AI for its famous festive advert.
This year’s version leans into animals rather than humans, there are polar bears, rabbits and sloths watching the red trucks wind through snowy forests. The decision to minimise human likenesses is a smart move because it avoids the uncanny valley problem that haunted last year’s effort.
While it's definitely an improvement compared to its predecessor, it's still missing what made the ad campaign of yesteryear so beloved in the first place, and I'm left scratching my head as to why Coca-Cola has gone back to AI for yet another year.
On the technical side there are clear improvements to the way Coca-Cola has used AI to create the festive ad. For example, the wheels on the trucks genuinely rotate rather than slide unrealistically across ice.
The lighting and environment feel more coherent, too, which is what you'd expect considering the improvements in AI video generation over the last 12 months.
However the ad is not without its flaws. Although the visuals are improved the mix of styles remains inconsistent. Some scenes look highly polished, others appear cartoonish or under-rendered. And while the inconsistency is frustrating, more importantly the warmth and human connection that made the original 1995 spot so memorable is still missing. What we get now feels like an imitation of nostalgia instead of nostalgia itself.
Not this again...
Coca-Cola is one of the world's biggest brands, in fact, it's so iconic that I bet you could show the logo to the majority of people across the globe and they'd know exactly what the company sells.
It's that global stature that makes the decision to use generative AI for advertising so news-worthy. By putting generative video front and center Coca-Cola is signalling that major advertisers will increasingly rely on AI not just for back-end tasks but for core creative output. For creators this raises questions about craft, value and authenticity. Brands chasing efficiency with machines risk losing the human spark that drives genuine emotion.
The ad is definitely an improvement over the 2024 version but it's still soulless, and it still feels completely disconnected from the core message of these festive adverts throughout the years. In the UK, one of the biggest retailers John Lewis releases a new holiday ad every year and it has become an event in itself just to see the message the brand decides to showcase.
With the ads being based on human emotion, using AI would absolutely destroy the brands image, and so it's bizarre that Coca-Cola has returned to generative AI this year to try and spread festive cheer.
I hope Coca-Cola learns from its mistakes this year because if the company treats this campaign simply as a cost-saving innovation rather than a story with feeling it risks being remembered not as a festive highlight but as a sign that the brand no longer cares about the holiday magic.
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