AI or No AI, Coke Gets the Christmas Love

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For the second year in a row, Coke’s “Holidays Are Coming” is one of the most talked-about ads of the festive season. That might seem strange for an ad that’s such a Christmas fixture people see it as the start of the holidays – but of course what’s bringing the attention and controversy is AI.

Coke has worked with Silverside AI to generate this ad, reportedly working from 70,000 AI generated clips to piece together a seamless festive experience. Just as with their 2024 AI-generated ad, the use of AI has drawn attention and criticism. But is it effective holiday advertising? Test Your Ad Pro, which uses a panel of very real respondents to predict effectiveness, has the answers.

The headline is that first, the ad is a triumph for Coke. And second, AI is not really the story.

Our Test Your Ad panel gave the new “Holidays Are Coming” a 5.9-Star Rating – the maximum possible score an ad can get in the Test Your Ad model. Holiday ads generally score higher than ordinary ads, because there’s so much more emphasis in them on positive emotion, but a 5.9-Star result is exceptional at any time of year.

What’s more, Coke’s ad scored Exceptional ratings on our two other key metrics – short-term Spike Rating and Brand Fluency, which measures rapid recognition of the brand. As one of the world’s most recognisable brands, Coke generally does very well on Fluency, but for all three metrics to hit Exceptional scores shows this is a very strong ad.

But what makes it one? When we dig into associations and verbatim comments in the Test Your Ad Pro report, it’s clear that AI hasn’t made much of an impact. There are a few negative comments criticising it, but the vast majority of viewers simply take the commercial on its own terms as a charming animated ad in which woodland creatures – and some more unusual animals, like sloths – react with wonder as the Coke Trucks pass. “Animals” and “Christmas” come out high in the key associations – AI isn’t mentioned.

The ad maintains a very high level of audience happiness all through, but its absolute peak comes with one of the shots of the trucks themselves. That highlights the most obvious reason the ad is a success: creative consistency.

“Holidays Are Coming”, whether in original or AI form, is a paragon of consistency. It uses the same iconic assets – Santa, the trucks, the snowy landscape, the excited onlookers and the music – in slightly different ways each time. But viewers never mind the changes, as long as those ingredients are all present.

In fact, simple changes can work to refresh the ad. Making the onlookers animals not humans may have been done for creative or technical reasons, but the swap works, giving viewers a new element to enjoy alongside all the old ones.

The lesson for Coke from Test Your Ad is that using AI doesn’t hurt ordinary viewers’ enjoyment of the ad at all – though the negative comments hint that the brand is wise not to mention AI in the ad itself. And the wider lesson is that long-term creativity – the assets Coke have developed over decades – matters much more than technology in the success of an ad.