Can we buy the world a new Coca-Cola ad?

Ted Harrison is the founder and CEO of neuemotion. 

The holidays are indeed coming, and for Coca-Cola, they are coming with a second wave of backlash to generating their ads instead of creating them. 

The criticisms are not simply warranted, they’re necessary. Even if the negative conversation surrounding last year’s attempt created top-of-mind awareness that exceeded internal metric standards, that the beloved American brand doubled-down without improving the output is a decision AI would make – not a human.

This year’s iteration is a cosplay of a previous cosplay of Coca-Cola’s classic creative team. Trees light up, animals look on in wonder, and when the creatures begin to applaud, you can almost hear the sound mixer dropping CrowdCheering.mp3 into the timeline before we’re suddenly met with animatronic AI Santa. It’s the illusion of a Coca-Cola holiday campaign, rendered by a model that understands composition but not connection. Where there was once earned sentiment, there is now simulacrum — a copy of a copy.

If you were able to make it all the way through the minute-long ad consisting of scenes that almost connect together, you are left empty. There’s no authorial intent. Bare traces of an editorial spine holding the pieces together. And the audience insight? No need! It’s a remake of their 1985 holiday ad, but with anthropomorphized animals with mistimed lip-syncs and a disclaimer at the end. Nothing rings more hollow than the tagline “Real Magic” following an asterisk calling it fake, with one exception: doing it two years in a row.

Here’s the problem: We’re seeing brand teams and agencies conflate execution with expression. The process becomes the pitch. “Look what we made” becomes “Look how we made it.” And in Coca-Cola’s case, that shift is literal. The campaign’s core message, Real Magic, brands the AI itself. The technology isn’t just behind the curtain anymore; it’s wearing the costume, taking a bow, and expecting flowers.

This is ultimately a reminder of what storytelling is. When brand expression gets so outsourced to tools, trends or timelines, the story is lost to the wind by its own detachment. The best campaigns, holiday or otherwise, give us a point of view. A feeling. A reflection of what matters right now. They offer something timeless. But AI doesn’t know what time it is. It knows patterns. It knows what we’ve said before (and what Coca-Cola has made before). It doesn’t know why.

You can be pro-AI and anti-whatever this is. According to the Wall Street Journal, a team of over 100 people worked on this, using over 70,000 prompts, to get to the end result. That seems less like a creative breakthrough and more like a warning. What’s at stake here isn’t just one campaign, it’s how we define creative work going forward. If effort and output are measured by prompt volume and headcount rather than resonance, why are we even using AI – the “efficiency” tool – in the first place?

So here’s where we land: this isn’t about Coca-Cola. It’s about the rest of us. Agencies, CMOs, creative leads – we all feel the pressure. Faster timelines. Leaner budgets. Tool envy. The temptation is obvious: if AI can fill the gaps, let it. If it can make something look good enough, post it.

But this is the line we can’t cross: outsourcing not just the production, but the point.

The best creative work still starts with clarity. What are we trying to say? Why now? Who is this for? And what do we want them to feel? If we don’t ask those questions before we start, AI won’t ask them for us.

It can’t. That’s not what it’s built for.

So yes, experiment. Test. Play. Build weird prototypes in pitch decks and fit in your odd inside jokes that have turned into real brand impact in the past. 

But don’t forget to feel the work before you approve it.