Coca-Cola debuts AI holiday ads, animals replace actors after 2024 backlash

Coca-Cola released its 2025 AI-generated holiday campaign Monday, featuring polar bears and sloths watching red trucks roll through snowy forests. The wheels turn this time, not glide. The humans are gone, replaced by animals that can't slip into the uncanny valley. Technical victory, the company says.

"Coca-Cola is red because it's made from the blood of out-of-work artists," animator Alex Hirsch wrote about last year's AI spot. This year's version drew similar fire across social platforms and trade publications, with critics pointing to stiff animal movements and inconsistent visual styles ranging from photorealistic to cartoonish within single scenes.

Coca-Cola partnered with AI studios Silverside and Secret Level to generate the campaign, running across 140 countries. Five AI specialists at Silverside prompted and refined more than 70,000 video clips to produce their version. Secret Level created a second using different generative models. Production timeline collapsed from a year to roughly a month, Chief Marketing Officer Manolo Arroyo told The Wall Street Journal. Cost dropped too, though the company declined specifics compared to traditional shoots involving location filming, union crews, and coordinating talent across multiple countries.

The workforce composition shift

Around 100 people worked on the campaign across Coca-Cola, agency WPP, and the two AI studios. That number matches previous non-AI productions, the company says. The composition changed radically. Five specialists generating video at scale replaced what typically requires 50 or more crew members for an ad of this technical complexity. Animators, riggers, lighting specialists, compositors working frame by frame.

Pratik Thakar, Coca-Cola's global VP of generative AI, framed the improvement as a craftsmanship upgrade. "Last year people criticized the craftsmanship. But this year the craftsmanship is ten times better," he told The Hollywood Reporter. Secret Level founder Jason Zada said he hopes viewers can't distinguish the spot from traditional Hollywood animation.

Multiple reviews suggest they can. Animals move like flat cutouts dragged across backgrounds rather than rigged 3D models. Visual styles shift jarringly between scenes. The sloth's wave bends wrong. Lighting feels coherent in some shots, under-rendered in others.

The aesthetic critiques miss the structural shift. Coca-Cola CEO James Quincy told investors in October the company will restructure its workforce next year as it brings in more AI and agentic technology. The holiday campaign demonstrates the mechanism. Same project scope, fundamentally different labor composition. Adweek's analysis of U.S. labor data shows employees aged 20 to 24, who typically fill junior roles and internships, are disappearing from the advertising industry as AI adoption accelerates alongside firm consolidation and weaker revenues.

The competing economic models

From Zada's perspective, the math works differently than critics claim. Smaller teams per project, but brands will keep spending. Budgets get spread across more creative executions produced faster. "You could do 10 times as much at scale," he argues. Madison Avenue could respond by doing more or pocketing savings. The pattern across other AI deployments suggests the latter.

From the creative workforce view, the efficiency argument obscures displacement. A 50-person crew becomes five specialists. The math is zero-sum in the short term, regardless of long-term scaling promises. Amazon, Paramount, and other companies laid off marketing staff last week, citing AI's ability to handle portions of their work.

From Coca-Cola's executive suite, the calculus centers on speed and cost against softening consumer resistance. The company reportedly spends around $5 billion annually on advertising. Even modest percentage savings from AI production create material budget shifts. Whether those savings fund additional creative output or flow to margins will determine if the efficiency narrative holds.

In short: executives see transformation opportunity, creative professionals see existential threat, consumers show declining resistance. All three readings are accurate simultaneously.

Brand equity versus production efficiency

Coca-Cola built its holiday presence on human warmth. Haddon Sundblom painted Santa for "Saturday Evening Post" readers in the 1930s, establishing America's rosy-cheeked icon with Coke bottle in hand. The 1971 "Buy the World a Coke" spot featured people from different backgrounds on a hilltop, singing. Those 1995 trucks rolling through snow weren't delivering soda alone. They were delivering seasonal connection.

The 2025 version uses Sundblom's original Santa artwork as the only human face. Everything else runs AI-generated. Using animals instead of people sidesteps last year's uncanny human problem. It doesn't address the emotional distance issue.

The gap between creator backlash and consumer response matters here. The New York Times reported that despite social media criticism, Coke's 2024 AI ads tested well with general consumers according to System1, a U.K. effectiveness research firm. People either didn't notice the AI or didn't care enough to downgrade their brand perception.

Consumer opposition to AI in ads dropped from 49% to 46% between 2024 and 2025, according to research firm Attest's poll across the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia. Not enthusiasm. Declining resistance. That three-point shift creates operational room for brands prioritizing efficiency over craft.

The acceleration pattern across advertising

Coca-Cola isn't pioneering in isolation. Google unveiled its first fully AI-generated commercial last week. The Interactive Advertising Bureau reports that 30% of connected TV commercials, social videos, and online videos in 2025 use generative AI tools for creation or enhancement, up from 22% in 2024. The trade group predicts 39% by 2026.

Retailer Aerie positioned its rejection of AI in photos and videos as brand differentiation. That stance works for companies targeting consumers who value authenticity highly. For global mass-market advertisers like Coca-Cola, the calculation runs differently. Speed and cost efficiency against a backdrop of softening consumer resistance creates room to push forward despite creative industry opposition.

Thakar told The Hollywood Reporter the company's executing a "major marketing transformation" with AI at the center. Coca-Cola's first major AI ad in 2023, "Masterpiece," brought museum painting subjects to life tossing Coke bottles. It generated minimal backlash. Last year's holiday spot drew significant criticism. This year's version sits between, technically improved but emotionally flat. The company remains open to AI for other high-impact campaigns. March Madness appears next. The pattern suggests continued deployment.

The structural question isn't whether AI tools improve aesthetically. They do. The question is whether brands built on emotional resonance can maintain that association while systematically removing humans from production. Coca-Cola is betting consumer indifference will allow the substitution. Early data suggests the bet may hold, despite vocal creative industry opposition.

Why this matters:

• Workforce restructuring in advertising accelerates through composition shifts rather than headcount, masking displacement behind efficiency narratives
  
• Consumer resistance to AI creative softens faster than quality gaps close, creating runway for brands prioritizing cost reduction over emotional depth