Editorial illustration for Coca-Cola's Holiday AI Ad Falls Flat Compared to OpenAI and Google's Video Tools
AI Video Ads Outshine Coca-Cola's Holiday Marketing Efforts
Coca-Cola’s AI holiday ad looks dated next to OpenAI’s Sora and Google’s Veo
Coca Cola's new holiday commercial is a visual mess. This is because they made it with artificial intelligence, and not the good kind.
The ad looks like something from three years ago, a relic. It has been instantly embarrassed by the recent, fluid videos from OpenAI's Sora and Google's Veo. Every brand wants to say it uses AI now.
Coke actually did, and the result shows how punishingly fast this technology moves. What was an experiment six months ago is a liability today.
The gap between marketing hype and technical delivery has never been clearer.
Compared to the convincing deepfake videos being generated by tools like OpenAI's Sora 2 or Google's Veo 3, the videos produced for this Coke ad feel extremely dated. The only notable improvement to my eyes is that the wheels on the iconic Coke trucks are actually consistently turning this year, rather than gliding statically over snow-covered roads. The Wall Street Journal reports that Coca-Cola teamed up with Silverside and Secret Level on its latest holiday campaign, two of the AI studios that previously worked on the 2024 Coke Christmas ads.
So the wheels turn correctly now. That's the highlight. It's a brutally low bar.
The ad's dated feel isn't just about aesthetics. It reveals a strategic miscalculation. Coke, with studios Silverside and Secret Level, deployed last year's tools for this year's spotlight.
They published a benchmark for their own obsolescence.
Corporate AI projects often move at the speed of committees and brand safety reviews. The underlying tech does not. It gallops.
This ad is a freeze frame of that disconnect. The Wall Street Journal frames it as an exploration. It looks more like a cautionary tale.
Brands are learning that claiming AI is easy. Making it look good is the hard part. For now, the best ads are still made by people. The worst ones are happy to tell you they were made by machines.
Further Reading
- Coca-Cola generated its holiday ads using several models - Mashable
- The 5 Biggest AI Stories of 2025 Explained - DataCamp's The Median
- 2025: Making Sense of a Year in AI - Little Black Book (LBBOnline)
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Common Questions Answered
How did Coca-Cola's holiday AI ad compare to video generation tools from OpenAI and Google?
Coca-Cola's holiday ad was considered underwhelming compared to advanced AI video tools like OpenAI's Sora 2 and Google's Veo 3. The commercial, created in partnership with Silverside and Secret Level, appeared dated and less sophisticated in its visual storytelling and animation techniques.
What was the most notable technical improvement in Coca-Cola's AI-generated holiday advertisement?
The most modest advancement in the Coca-Cola holiday ad was the realistic movement of truck wheels, which now actually rotate instead of gliding unnaturally across snowy landscapes. This small detail demonstrates the incremental progress being made in AI-generated visual content.
Which AI studios collaborated with Coca-Cola on their holiday marketing campaign?
According to the Wall Street Journal, Coca-Cola partnered with Silverside and Secret Level to create their holiday advertisement using AI technology. These studios worked together to produce a video that ultimately highlighted the emerging capabilities and limitations of current AI video generation tools.
Further Reading
- The Coca-Cola AI Campaign review | It's not the real thing — Film Stories
- Papers with Code - Latest NLP Research — Papers with Code
- Hugging Face Daily Papers — Hugging Face
- ArXiv CS.CL (Computation and Language) — ArXiv
