I am completely exhausted by huge corporations like McDonald's and Coca-Cola choosing to rely so heavily on AI for their holiday ads. McDonald's made $25.9 billion in revenue in 2024, and Coca-Cola made $47.1 billion. Do these companies expect us to be OK with AI slop garbage when they could've spent a tiny fraction of that to hire a real animator or videographer?
In case you haven't been inundated with these AI commercials, I'll back up a bit. Both McDonald's and Coca-Cola have launched holiday-themed commercials that are undeniably made with AI -- each bragged about its use of AI, which they have probably come to regret. They're very different, showing the full range of what's possible with AI in advertising. But the backlash against both proves we don't have the appetite for AI slop.
McDonald's commercial features a series of holiday-themed mishaps, set to a parody of the song It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, about how it's actually the most terrible time of the year. The commercial is only 30 seconds long and intended only for the Netherlands, but it has already garnered so much hate online that the company removed the video from its pages. The marketing agency behind the spot, The Sweetshop Film, still has the video up on its website.
The McDonald's ad is very clearly AI, with short clips stitched together with a bunch of hard jump cuts. The text isn't nearly legible, fine details are off and it just has that AI look I've come to quickly recognize as an AI reporter. In a now-deleted social media post, the marketing agency's CEO talked about how it used various AI tools to create it. By contrast, the Coca-Cola commercial is a little more put-together. A Coca-Cola truck drives through a wintry landscape and into a snowy town, and forest animals awaken to follow the truck and its soda bottle contents to a lit Christmas tree in a town square. But even this video has clearly AI-generated elements.
While disappointed, I wasn't surprised when I saw the ad and the resulting backlash. There has been a surge in creative generative AI tools, especially in the past year, with numerous AI tools built specifically for marketers. They promise to help create content, automate workflows and analyze data. A huge proportion (94%) of marketers have a dedicated AI budget, and three-quarters of them expect that budget to grow, according to Canva's 2025 Marketing and AI report. That's partly why we've seen a massive increase of AI-generated content in our social media feeds. It's no wonder Merriam-Webster selected 'slop' as its word of the year.
McDonald's and Coca-Cola's feel-good, festive commercials manage to hit upon every single controversial issue in AI, which is why they're inspiring such strong reactions from viewers. AI content is becoming -- has already become -- normalized. We can't escape chatbots online and AI slop in our feeds. McDonald's and Coca-Cola's use of AI is yet another sign that companies are plowing ahead with AI without truly considering how we'll react. Like advertisements, AI is inescapable.
If AI in advertising is here to stay, it's worth breaking down how it's used and where we, as media consumers, don't want to see it used.
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Spotting the AI in Coca-Cola's ad
McDonald's now-removed ad was clearly AI, with its plastic-y people and jerky motions. Its format, a series of short clips stitched together with hard jump cuts, is another telltale sign since most AI video generators can only generate clips up to 10 or so seconds long. Coca-Cola's ad was a little different, but the AI use was just as obvious.
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