Media Foundry Limited’s Post

Merry ChristmAIs from The Coca-Cola Company: If you haven’t already seen it (and you probably have, or else you’ve read about it), marketers and consumers are divided by Coca Cola’s Christmas ad. Why, you ask? Well, because the upbeat tinseltown remake of its heritage 30 year-old Christmas truck ad was produced entirely by AI. Not a single actor, Coke bottle or real live polar bear features in the ad. My favourite, if somewhat ironic, part? The tagline: Real Magic. Despite its twee attempts to cling onto the nostalgia of the ad it creates year on year, as the bright red truck lights up the dark wintry landscape to bring warmth (and sugary flavour!) to Christmas, people have taken to social media to voice their uproar. Some claim it’s ‘soulless’; others ‘dystopian’. One user laments, ‘Coca-Cola has always been about the magic of Christmas. You killed this magic.’ But beyond the emotive response (which, despite some users’ fury only makes the thing itself more well-known anyway), the question we’ve been asking ourselves is more on the techy side of things. More precisely, what AI means for the creative industries in 2025. Not that we’re rearing the head of the sceptical ‘AI is coming for your job’ narrative of 2023, but specifically whether it is a blessing or a bane for agencies. Speaking to The Independent, Javier Meza, EU CMO for Coca-Cola, said the brand was adapting to ‘today’s times’ by implementing AI, adding that it was an ‘efficient’ way of creating the advert whilst saving time and money (giving creatives a lean Christmas). Call me a romantic, but ‘efficient’ and ‘cost-friendly’ aren’t adjectives I’d ever usually ascribe to any artistic process. Rather than the finished product of the ad itself being ‘soulless’, maybe the more salient question is whether it makes the act of creation itself devoid of any sentimentality or heart? AI may be turning creative practices, and careers, into cannon fodder. You can write poems in the style of Keats, rewrite songs as John Lennon or create tinseltown imagery at the touch of a button. That is, without any thought, introspection, or lived experience. Even at its most dystopian, it’s truly amazing what technology can do. But when it comes to art and creativity (even in advertising - and especially at Christmas, which is a time for heart, togetherness and nostalgia), some things are just too transactional. I’ve never been much of a Coke drinker by trade, but it’s certainly left a sour taste in my mouth this year, writes Grace Tucker. What do you reckon? https://lnkd.in/eTwHzgHR #christmasads #cocacola #advertising #creativity The Drum Campaign UK Creativebrief Creativepool