Fans mark the start of the festivities with the release of the Coca-Cola ad (Image: Coca Cola)
Everybody in Britain knows that the countdown to is officially on when they hear the iconic ‘Holidays are Coming’ jingle from Coca-Cola.
First airnig in 1995, the ad shows the soft drink’s signature red delivery trucks decorated with lights as they make their festive deliveries through snowy landscapes.
Ever since its success, variations of the staple advert return to the airwaves in the weeks leading up to the festive celebration every year. But this year, the company decided to make an “unforgivable” change to their infamous landscapes.
During an ad break for ITV’s launch of this evening, fans were up in arms as a brand new version of the Coca-Cola advertisement was shown.
Unlike previous years, this year’s advert has been created solely by AI – made with three AI studios Secret Level, Silverside AI and Wild Card.
The advert was created entirely with AI (Image: Coca-Cola)
In addition to featuring images of the Cocoa-Cola truck driving through snowy landscapes, it also drives past recognisable spots across the world including English villages, American highways.
The minute-long clip also included clips of adorable animals including deer and polar bears as well as less seasonal animals including bunnies and monkeys swimming in a lake.
It didn’t take long before fans flooded to X – formerly known as Twitter – to share their disappointment onling. One user penned:”This is gross. It literally sucks all the Christmas joy from the ad.
“It should be about people, and the warmth you get from being around friends and family. This does literally the opposite, it’s cold, robotic, lacking humanity, or a soul. Awful.”
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Fans were left up in arms about the change to the advert (Image: Coca-Cola)
Another agreed: “Companies are killing acting, emotion, and creativity. Now they tell computers to make an unreal commercial to make their product look good. This is just uneasy.”
A third joked: ‘It’s always the real thing’, aparently not” as another quipped: “This advert makes me want a cold glass of Pepsi.”
A fourth argued: “Just saw an AI generated Coca-Cola commercial on TV … genuinely how are we letting this happen. I feel like I’m watching the death of art and our planet unfold in front of my eyes and no one irl [in real life] seems to care.”
Since the original nearly 30 years ago, Coca-Cola’s annual ‘Holidays are Coming’ adverts have used real actors and two tonne trucks are decked out with Christmas lights.
But this year’s ad has been developed solely using AI, meaning every element the viewer sees a figment of a machine’s “imagination”.
The use of AI in advertising and the arts has proved to be a controversial topic, as some critics feel it forces creative types out of work.
Javier Meza, the EU chief marketing officer at Coca-Cola, said the company wanted to adapt to “today’s times”, with the use of a more diverse cast and AI technology.
Speaking to Marketing Week, he said: “We didn’t start by saying, ‘OK, we need to do this with AI’. The brief was, we want to bring Holidays Are Coming into the present and then we explored AI as a solution to that.”
In an official company statement, a spokesman called it an “exciting venture into AI-generated storytelling.” It read: “[It] demonstrates Coca-Cola’s commitment to embracing innovation, leveraging our collaborations with top creatives and technology partners, while staying true to its core values – spreading happiness and creating real magic.”