Coca-Cola’s latest holiday ad campaign, titled “Holidays Are Coming,” marks another misstep in the company’s growing reliance on generative AI for its festive storytelling. Despite backlash over last year’s AI-generated commercials—criticized for glitchy wheels and eerily unnatural human faces—the brand has doubled down with a new effort that feels even more disjointed and visually unconvincing. This year’s ad swaps human actors for a cast of animals: polar bears, a panda, and a sloth. But instead of delivering a cohesive, whimsical holiday experience, the animation suffers from inconsistent styles—shifting abruptly between hyper-realistic textures and exaggerated, cartoonish features. The creatures move with a stiff, unnatural rhythm, resembling flat images pasted onto backgrounds rather than fully rendered 3D characters. Compared to the fluid, lifelike sequences now being produced by advanced tools like OpenAI’s Sora 2 and Google’s Veo 3, Coca-Cola’s latest effort appears outdated and poorly executed. The only minor improvement is that the iconic Coke truck wheels now spin consistently, a fix from last year’s static, floating wheels. Still, that small win does little to redeem the overall aesthetic, which lacks polish and emotional resonance. The campaign was developed in collaboration with Silverside and Secret Level—two AI studios previously involved in the 2024 holiday ads. According to The Wall Street Journal, around 100 people worked on the project, including five AI specialists from Silverside who helped generate and refine over 70,000 AI video clips. Coca-Cola declined to disclose the campaign’s budget but emphasized that the AI-driven process was significantly faster and more cost-effective than traditional production. Manolo Arroyo, Coca-Cola’s Chief Marketing Officer, told the Journal that the new method cut production time from a year to about a month. “Before, when we were doing the shooting and all the standard processes for a project, we would start a year in advance,” he said. “Now, you can get it done in around a month.” This shift reflects a broader trend in advertising, where companies are embracing AI to streamline content creation. Google recently unveiled its first fully AI-generated commercial, asserting that audiences don’t notice or care about the technology behind the scenes. Coca-Cola appears to be following suit, even as past missteps—like the fabricated J.G. Ballard book ad in April—raise questions about the reliability and ethics of AI-generated content. While the speed and cost savings are undeniable, the results suggest that the brand may be sacrificing quality and authenticity in the pursuit of efficiency. For many viewers, the charm and warmth of Coca-Cola’s holiday legacy now feel lost in a sea of digital imperfection.