Every year, Coca-Cola’s Christmas advertising is a centerpiece of the holiday season, evoking nostalgia and warmth through visuals of snowy scenes, red trucks, and smiling families.
In 2025 , the beverage giant took a controversial leap, partnering with AI studios Silverside and Secret Level to create an entirely AI-generated Holidays Are Coming ad, populated with animated animals and surreal winter magic. Instead of celebration, the campaign quickly sparked a backlash and ignited debate over creativity,
authenticity, and the future of advertising.
What’s Different: AI-Generated Storytelling Takes Center Stage Rather than featuring actors, classic Santa images, or the famed Coca-Cola caravan, the 2025 holiday spot relied exclusively on generative AI, resulting in a sloppily animated, deeply unnatural cast of anthropomorphic animals gathering around a truck driven by a partially obscured Santa, who seems to have gotten lost in the uncanny valley.
AI was used to generate over 70,000 video clips in just 30 days, shrinking traditional production timelines and budgets. Coca-Cola’s global CMO, Manolo Arroyo, confirmed the tech-led strategy: AI production was faster and cheaper, reducing the timeline from a year to just a month.
But the creative shortcut came at a reputational cost. Holiday ads aren’t just about visuals. They carry emotional weight and cultural memory…
