Tag Archives: Coca-Cola

Have People Really Said ‘Humbug!’ to Coca-Cola’s A.I.-Created Holiday Ad?

by doctorads

Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

There I was, minding my own business and poking around MediaPost, when I came across Danielle Oster’s piece about a new Coca-Cola spot that has lots of people harrumphing.

Earlier this week, Coca-Cola kicked off its annual holiday advertising blitz — which has since generated buzz over the brand’s use of AI.

At the center of the campaign is a 30-second hero TV spot called “The Holiday Magic is Coming,” recreating a classic spot from 1995 while incorporating the use of AI technology in the making of the ad. Small text appears for a few seconds near the beginning, informing audiences that it was “Created with Real Magic AI” — but that announcement is s easy to miss.

For some viewers, the approach didn’t go down easy, with USA Today reporting the comments on the brand’s YouTube post of the video were largely negative.

What the heck, Doc. Does A.I. actually stand for Absolutely Idiotic?

– Xmas Xcess

Dear XX,

First things first: Here’s the Coke spot those people are snorting at.

As for that “small text” disclosure, here’s how it looks on-screen.

One YouTube commenter wrote, “Nothing like celebrating the spirit of Christmas with the most soulless commercial possible.” The MediaPost piece says, “Coca-Cola has since restricted the page, hiding comments,” but you can see 2283 comments here, so go figure.

Beyond snarky Santa claws, the inevitable culture wars have also flared up, as Salon’s Ashlie D. Stevens has detailed.

Many creators and customers were quick to criticize the campaign as being emblematic of a worrying trend of replacing human artistry with machine-generated substitutes. For instance, Alex Hirsch, the creator of the beloved Disney series “Gravity Falls,” joked online that Coca-Cola’s signature red color scheme was now “made from the blood of out-of-work artists,” while other social media commentators described the advertisement as “disastrous” and “dystopian.”

“Coca-Cola just put out an ad and ruined Christmas,” Dylan Pearce, a TikTok user, said of the commercial. “To put out slop like this just ruins the Christmas spirit.”

Then again, not everyone is all Grinched out by the ad, according to Oster’s piece: “System1 analyzed the performance of the full 80-second ad with audiences using its ‘Test Your Ad’ platform, and awarded it an ‘exceptional’ score of 5.9 (out of 6) in its star rating system. ‘Excited’ and ‘uplifted’ were the most common emotional responses reported.”

(None of the survey respondents were told the ad was A.I. generated, for those of you keeping score at home.)

The Doc’s diagnosis: This contretemps will go flat faster than the Coke you leave out for Santa on Christmas eve. Happy holidays one and all.

Why Is Bill Nye The Science Guy Greenwashing for Coca-Cola?

by doctorads

Well the Doc opened up the old mailbag today and here’s what poured out.

Dear Dr. Ads,

There I was, minding my own business and scrolling through MediaPost’s Marketing Daily, when I came across this report by Todd Wasserman.

Bill Nye Stars In Questionable Coke Ad

With Earth Day about two weeks away, Coca-Cola has released this video starring Bill Nye, who says that “together we can close the loop” on waste.

The video, by Mackinnon & Saunders, discusses “Creating a world without waste,” and an animatronic version of Nye talks about how we can reuse plastic. “It’s an amazing material,” he says.

In the three-minute video, Nye also says this: “The good people at the Coca-Cola company are dedicating themselves to addressing our global plastic waste problem. They know they have a responsibility to help solve this issue and their goal: A world without waste.”

Is this the real thing, Doc?

– Bull Nigh

Dear Bull,

Good question. Let’s look at the video, shall we?

Cute, engaging – and pretty much total propaganda, as Molly Taft details in this piece at Gizmodo.

Bill Nye, the Sellout Guy

In a new video, TV’s favorite scientist parrots hackneyed lines about “the good people at Coca-Cola” and their near-useless recycling efforts.

Bad news for everyone who loved watching Bill Nye the Science Guy during middle school science class: your fave is problematic. This week, Coca-Cola, one of the world’s biggest plastic polluters, teamed up with TV’s favorite scientist for a campaign to create a “world without waste,” a joke of a corporate greenwashing campaign.

In a video innocuously titled “The Coca-Cola Company and Bill Nye Demystify Recycling,” an animated version of Nye—with a head made out of a plastic bottle and his signature bow tie fashioned from a Coke label—walks viewers through the ways “the good people at the Coca-Cola company are dedicating themselves to addressing our global plastic waste problem.”

Problem is, as Taft notes, “[Coca-Cola] produces about 3.3 million U.S. tons of plastic packaging per year, and has been named one of the most polluting brands in the world by multiple different audits.”

Even worse:

Coca-Cola has also said it has no plans to stop producing single-use plastic, because, it claims, customers simply don’t want anything else. If Coke had a history of fighting for beneficial recycling policies, one ad might not be a problem, but representatives from the company were caught on tape as recently as 2019 lobbying against bottle bills that would reward customers for recycling but tack an extra charge onto the company.

To recap: Molly Taft’s Gizmodo piece on Coca-Cola’s recycling record is the pause that depresses.

The Doc’s antidote: Try one of these Ethical Soft Drinks listed by Moral Fibres.

(Once again: Dr. Ads is not a licensed physician. But bottoms up!)