• by Tanya Gazdik , 11 hours ago

A hilarious “bloopers” reel created by an agency shows why brands must tread carefully when considering AI for campaigns. 

Coca-Cola and McDonald’s AI-heavy holiday ads inspired the effort. 

“The Canadian agency Wunder says it created its AI holiday spot as a response to that Coca-Cola ad and as a commentary on the state of AI in the creative sector,” according to CreativeBloq. “They used a raft of AI tools in the process: ChatGPT for script and creative, Augment Code for casting and wardrobe, Qwen Image for location scouting, Nano Banana for photography, Google Flow (Veo 3.1) for video production, Imagen AI for color grading and Eleven Labs for music and sound effects.”

But in making the AI-generated ad, they had to weed out a lot of blooper images, like comical AI hallucinations and inconsistencies, including some serious problems coping with the logic of doors and telephones.

Back to reality, the McDonald’s ad, which originated in the Netherlands, was pulled, but it's unclear who made that decision.

“Arguably the most dramatic explanation floating around is that McDonald’s — which has capital in McDonald’s Netherlands directly, as opposed to other royalty arrangements — directed its Dutch segment to run the AI ads itself,” according to Futurism. “If this were the case, it would likely mean that McDonald’s headquarters forced its Netherlands counterpart to bite the bullet on the horrifying AI ad in order to test its feasibility for larger market segments.”

TBWA and The Sweetshop — the agency and production company behind the turd of an ad — have since tried to scrub it from the net.

“Similar to Coke’s 2025 Holiday ad, the McDonald’s spot is like a visual seizure, full of grotesque characters, horrible color grading, and hackneyed AI approximations of basic physics,” according to Futurism. 

The criticism was harsh.

“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,” according to CNET. “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.”

Data does not support the public’s acceptance of AI in advertising.

"A survey of more than 6,000 US consumers conducted by the brand-tracking platform Tracksuit in November found that overall sentiment toward AI-generated advertising skewed negative (39%),” according to Business Insider, which critiqued some of the year’s AI efforts. “Neutrality was also strong among respondents, at 36%, while only 18% felt positive about brands using AI-generated content in their ads.”