Coca-Cola remade its most famous Christmas ad with AI. Test audiences loved it. Then it went live, and the internet called it soulless. Here's what changed, and what it means for any brand using AI.
A memory, handed to a machine
"Holidays Are Coming" has marked the start of Christmas in several countries since 1995 (LBB Online). In November 2024, Coca-Cola replaced it with its first fully AI-generated ad (Marketing Week).
Viewers called it soulless, uncanny and dystopian (Campaign Asia). The faces looked almost real, but not quite. An ad about warmth suddenly felt like a shortcut.
Plot twist: the testers loved it
Coca-Cola pre-tested the ad, and consumers loved it (Marketing Week). Ad-testing firm System1 gave it 5.9 stars, its maximum, against a soft-drinks average of 3.0. The catch? Test audiences were never told it was made with AI (LBB Online).
People didn't dislike the ad. They disliked finding out a machine made it.
In 2025, Coca-Cola used AI again, saying it was cheaper and faster (Yorkshire Evening Post). It became the most talked-about Christmas ad of the year, but only 37% of that conversation was positive (Campaign).
When content gets cheap, trust gets expensive
AI made content cheap. Anyone can make ten ads before their coffee gets cold. And when something becomes cheap, something else becomes expensive. Right now, that's trust.
Researchers at Washington State University showed more than 1,000 US adults identical product descriptions. When one included the term "artificial intelligence," people were less likely to buy, across all eight categories tested (WSU). The product didn't change. The label did.
The campaign clients never picked
In my years working as a marketing professional, I'd often present a few different versions of the same campaign. Same brief, same goal, different routes. Some were built end to end with AI. Others mixed AI's speed with human strategy.
More often than not, the fully AI-made option was never chosen. The winners used AI for research, drafts and fast testing, with a person shaping the strategy and the story.
AI does the maths. You decide what matters.
This isn't anti-AI. AI replies to DMs at 2 a.m., finds your best ad by 9, reads a thousand reviews in one go and never takes a day off.
But while 88% of companies now use AI, only 39% see any impact on profit (McKinsey). AI is a calculator. It can't sit across from your customer, feel when an ad is a little off, or earn trust. That's still you.
How to use AI without losing your audience
Put AI behind the scenes, people in front. Let AI research, draft and test. Keep humans on your story and voice.
Lead with the benefit, not the buzzword. Customers care what it does for them, not how it was made.
Keep emotional content human. The more it's about feeling, the more a person needs to shape it.
Test it the way the world will see it. If people will find out it's AI, test with that built in.
Use AI to make things faster. Use people to make things matter. At ScaleX, that's exactly how we work.
Because anyone can make an ad now. Making people believe it? That's just marketing.
