The Question For Advertisers Is Why The AI Coca Cola Christmas Ad Is Creepy
Everybody’s talking about Coca Cola’s new Christmas ad made entirely with artificial intelligence. The issues people have with it are many. Everything from it being creepy to others saying Coca Cola cheaped out and didn’t want to pay real actors. I also found the ad creepy, particularly the scenes with people in them. And it was in the creepy feeling that I had a small spiritual epiphany and a take-away for advertisers. But first, here’s the ad in case you haven’t seen it:
why is this ad creepy?
The answer to this question is important, not only to help explain our feelings towards this ad, but our feelings towards AI in general. It’s very difficult to put my finger on it or articulate fully, but when I look at the people in this ad there’s something missing in them. There’s something off.
I mean the people are good looking and check all the human boxes: eyes are in the right place, so are their mouths, they’re smiling and happy, and they are in a joyful, beautiful context. But there’s one box left unchecked that doesn’t really have a label. And we can tell.
Humans are experts at identifying humans. We’re so expert that we can even tell what other humans are thinking just by looking at the subtlest shifts in a person’s face. But these are superficial, evidentiary noticings. There’s a much deeper and much more difficult to explain issue with the people in this ad. It’s an intangible. It’s the energy. And it doesn’t really have a checkable “box” in reality. But judging from the public outcry, this issue is noticeable on some level to everyone who watches the ad.
These “people” in the ad have no soul and we can sense that. And it’s at the moment of this realization we feel a feeling of fear. We see animated “people” on the screen checking all the boxes, looking amazingly like real human beings. But we also “see” utter soullessness. I can’t point to the soullessness, but I can feel it plenty.
And that’s when it hit me.
real Human engagement may be more profound than we realize.
It was in the recognition of soullessness in this Coca Cola ad that made me reconsider what transpires between two real humans. Might our everyday engagements with each other be far more profound than we realize?
Logic would tell us this creepy feeling of soullessness must necessarily mean we believe the relationships between real human is soulFUL. I mean, just as I can’t point to the soullessness in this Coke ad, I also can’t point to another real person’s soul. But in both cases I can feel it. In both cases I know it. It’s an invisible, spiritual box that is either checked or it is not.
In everyday life, we take our collective soulfulness for granted and don’t really think about it. We all have soulful relationships, so what? But watching this Coke ad and witnessing what the absence of a soul looks like made me appreciate the profundity of real human interactions.
Advertisers must take this dynamic into account when they use artificial intelligence to replace humans in their ads. You may think you’re checking all the boxes, but you may not be. And in the process you’re turning people off, not on.
So I guess I should thank Coca Cola for leading me to this new spiritual appreciation. They didn’t intend it, but here it is nonetheless.
All because the people in this Coca Cola ad were anything but the real thing.
Will Burns is the Founder & CEO of the revolutionary virtual-idea-generating company, Ideasicle X. He’s an advertising veteran from such agencies as Wieden & Kennedy, Goodby Silverstein, Arnold Worldwide, and Mullen. He was a Forbes Contributor for nine years writing about creativity in modern branding. Sign up for the Ideasicle Newsletter and never miss a post like this. Will’s bio.