Happy Christmas from AI
Coca-Cola has remade its classic Holidays are Coming advert using Generative AI achieving positive audience ratings – with the highest possible scores from industry standard audience engagement methods. If nothing else, using AI to generate a Christmas advert has proved to be an extremely effective marketing tool, with lots of examples of mainstream media coverage over the past month.
The way this works is Coca-Cola have allowed a Generative AI to work with their own film archive and produce something based on existing materials. This was discussed on The Rest is Entertainment podcast by hosts Marina Hyde and Richard Osborn:
“Coca-Cola is saying, of course, AI you can use the Coke advert, but it is owned by Coca-Cola and it doesn’t go anywhere else. We get a cheap advert, but it’s based on the fact that we spent an awful lot of money and creativity on these adverts over the previous years.”
In reality, I think it’s clear that there will have been careful planning and prompting from a team of directors when working with AI in this way. Therefore, the advert might not have been as cheap to produce as it might first seem. Who knows how many versions were produced, and how much sub-editing was needed to bring together the strongest AI outputs into a finished product.
What this does point to is a future where more companies can use AI on IP or brand-based assets that they already own, rather than needing to create new materials out of nothing. It’s also arguably why people loved the AI Coca-Cola advert, simply because they were familiar with all the imagery and concepts it included – like a ‘best of’ or ‘greatest hits’ compilation of every Christmas Coca-Cola advert ever made. It’s the idea of a Christmas Coca-Cola advert that was probably already somewhere in your subconscious, which the AI has done a good job of predicting, frame by frame.
However, I do think this raises questions about creativity in advertising, especially in a world where film and TV is already increasing recycling ideas, using the same franchises, and relying on established brands to engage with audiences. The podcast discussion goes on to raise the question of how other big AI partnerships with Hollywood might now become a thing subject to licensing and careful management of assets.
Finally, it’s also interesting that AI can be used to adapt footage and media (potentially) more cheaply in this way – especially when it comes to producing outputs that need to work across multiple formats and platforms. This was also covered in the podcast, describing how brands like Coca-Cola advertising at Christmas will need many different variations of content to run on socials, in cinemas, and on digital radio etc. Media distribution has become a much more fragmented thing, so there’s a need that AI can help meet to efficiently edit/format content in lots of different ways in order that it goes across all types of different media. This also shows the potential of how AI will prove a valuable tool for any teams wanting to produce a range of content from existing brand assets, aside from TV and film production. Much of my early career was spent editing digital design assets manually to different formats for the needs of more traditional direct marketing, digital communications, or web-based platforms.
Following the adverts initial success, I’ve seen some debate about whether it’s really better than previous versions, despite the strong audience engagement scores. I also agree with some of the media coverage that the ad has a ‘creepy’ or ‘unworldly’ feel to it. But the end result is simply a product of how Generative AI work, in that it deals in averages. Coca-Cola has made the best ‘average’ version of a classic Christmas advert. It ticks all the boxes, but at the same time, once you know it’s AI generated, it does make you question whether we’ll be increasingly consuming good ‘average’ output where nothing really surprises us, delights us beyond nostalgia, or stands out from established brand IP that we’re already deeply familiar with.
Footnote: I’ve now seen some other news coverage that Coca-Cola are experimenting with other uses of AI, such as AI generated flavours, which does suggest they’re mostly in this for the marketing coverage.
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