Coca-Cola is back with another A.I.-generated “Holidays Are Coming” ad this year, which you may have caught on TV this holiday season.
The Five Most-Key Takeaways from This Blog Post
- The work that went into it should be a sobering reminder to business owners that generative A.I. is more of a creative tool requiring human refinement than a creative genie ready to magically produce great content at the snap of a finger.
- Worth noting is that Coca-Cola has faced criticism over using A.I. in last year’s ad, yet its (intentionally provocative?) decision to do it again this year shows its commitment to using generative A.I. in advertising.
- Coca-Cola’s Chief Marketing Officer claims that it took around a month to create this A.I. ad, contrasting that timeframe with the year of work the old-fashioned way of producing a commercial would take.
- Despite the A.I. shaming about these ads’ efforts, Coca-Cola is so firmly established in the market and culture in general that it continues to see growth. Some brands can just absorb the shocks of controversy while raking in savings from A.I. use.
- The ad is the result of a partnership with A.I. specialists from the companies Silverside and Secret Level, requiring around 100 people overall. Plus, as the title of this blog post notes, the effort involved 70,000 generations that workers in turn had to refine to make the finished product.
?The Significance for Business Owners
Not all business owners are in charge of Coca-Cola, which indeed has the capex to afford a fully human-generated animated commercial on its own.
Many business owners, in fact, do not have the capex for a human-generated animated commercial like “Holidays Are Coming”. And if they did, they may not have leftover funds to afford prime-time airings all throughout the holiday season.
Nor do many business owners have the resources (100 workers on this gen-A.I. commercial alone that took a month to get right, mind you) to get the gen-A.I. final product that you can see on TV during football games.
These points are not meant to quash any hopes of a business owner being able to crank out a “Holidays Are Coming”–tier ad.
Rather, the lesson here is to recognize the gains that Coca-Cola had by spending a month on what normally would take a year, yet with the same number of people, only performing different roles.
Extrapolate that to your own situation: A.I. can save plenty of time, but it can still be effortful (even tediously iterative) and require human coordination to pull off the final result.
What Changed Between Last Year’s A.I. Ad and This One?
A new holiday tradition is upon us: spot any quality differences and significant changes between one year’s “Holidays Are Coming” gen-A.I. ad and the next year’s.
The biggest change you’ll notice if you watch the ads back to back (here is the 2024 iteration,and you can watch the 2025 version here) is that this year’s ad features mainly A.I. animals rather than humans.
The 2024 ad did not have any really uncanny-valley moments with the prominently featured human characters. However, people who are aware of gen A.I.’s troublesome history with representing the human hand may have noticed the conspicuous lack of showing any clapping when you hear applause.
So, why the emphasis on animals like jumping penguins and clapping seals and a squirrel that manages to climb to the peak of a town-square Christmas tree?
Maybe animals are just really entertaining to watch. But one of the enduring sore spots about using gen A.I. to create content is replacing human actors with gen-A.I. representations of people, so it may be the case that Coca-Cola is trying to sidestep that specific controversy.
In 2025’s ad, there is just a squirrel’s-eye-view shot of an indiscriminate mass of people gathering in the town square.
If you are a business owner, maybe this can be a good way to avoid backlash: focus less on generating content that may stir replacement-anxiety among, say, actors or influencers, and instead focus on whimsical critters or animated characters.
At least in this point and time, there just might be something about gen-A.I. humans that feels deceptive or too uncanny-valley no matter how good the gen-A.I. representation.
The Last (But Not Least) Key Takeaway from This Blog Post
Coca-Cola’s gen-A.I. ad strategy is notable to business owners because it keeps an emphasis on human quality control and refinement of gen-A.I. output with the goal of getting rid of the time-intensive labor of the traditional way of doing things.
Other Great GO AI Blog Posts
GO AI the blog offers a combination of information about, analysis of, and editorializing on A.I. technologies of interest to business owners, with especial focus on the impact this tech will have on commerce as a whole.
On a usual week, there are multiple GO AI blog posts going out. Here are some notable recent articles:
- For Businesses and Other Organizations, What Makes a Successful Chatbot?
- IBM Watson vs. ChatGPT vs. Gemini: How Will Each Affect Search Engines?
- Using A.I. to Find Resources for Business Owners
- How Would Restricting Open-Source A.I. Affect Business Owners?
- The EU’s A.I. Act Has Become Law: The Implications for Business Owners (Especially American)
In addition to our GO AI blog, we also have a blog that offers important updates in the world of search engine optimization (SEO), with blog posts like “Google Ends Its Plan to End Third-Party Cookies”.
GO Deeper on Substack!
If you want to get a bigger-picture view on where A.I. is and is headed, then check out our Substack to learn about emerging and dominant themes in the A.I. industry that affect all kinds of businesses!
