[HN Gopher] McDonald's pulls AI Christmas ad after backlash
___________________________________________________________________
McDonald's pulls AI Christmas ad after backlash
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abRie4vAvJ4
Author : mindracer
Score : 98 points
Date : 2025-12-10 12:57 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| Fricken wrote:
| This is the slop that BBC failed to show you:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-YwjXEVGo8
| HardwareLust wrote:
| Holy shit that's awful.
| jackdoe wrote:
| but cheap
| BoredPositron wrote:
| The agency said they spent over 5000 hours just in the
| execution.
| gdulli wrote:
| I haven't watched it but I'm sure they also either said
| or implied McDonalds is worthwhile on some level so we
| can pump the brakes on taking them at their word.
| creata wrote:
| Is there any doubt that the agency is lying?
| bediger4000 wrote:
| No. Advertising is all lies, so by any system of logic,
| as agencies are habitual, consistent liars.
| aitchnyu wrote:
| I've seen individual AI fans create these in minutes, hardly
| '"seven weeks" where the team "hardly slept" and created
| "thousands of takes"'.
| eurekin wrote:
| Oh, that can also mean they were out partying using the ad
| budgets funds :D
| amonith wrote:
| The thing is, if you want AI output to be heavily directed,
| which is probably the case here, I _can_ imagine that
| thousands of random takes had to be made to make the damn
| thing follow the director 's imagination. If you don't care
| too much about the output you can make these very quickly,
| yeah.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| This is worse than what the average college kid can do over a
| weekend. What garbage.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That... doesn't bother me more than any other commercial.
|
| Commercials are mostly dumb. This is another pretty dumb one.
| It has clunky AI just like plenty of other commercials have
| clunky traditional VFX.
|
| Can't really see myself getting worked up about it?
|
| If AI frees up VFX artists so they can work on movies rather
| than commercials, I'm all for that.
| watwut wrote:
| > If AI frees up VFX artists so they can work on movies
| rather than commercials, I'm all for that.
|
| There are way more people who want to be movie VFX artists
| then positions. Artists do commercials, because it pays that
| is where jobs are. They would gladly do cool movies.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _There are way more people who want to be movie VFX
| artists then positions._
|
| Not good ones. Good VFX studios are actually a major
| blocker in movie production, because there aren't enough of
| them. And their only limit is the number of qualified
| artists available.
| watwut wrote:
| Really not. If the movie studios were willing to pay for
| that, there would be more studios.
|
| We are talking about very competitive field where
| employers call all the shots. You know how you recognize
| lack of workers in an area? By high salaries, low
| competitiveness and very good working conditions.
| aswegs8 wrote:
| Don't get it either. LGTM. Sure, it's no high budget (pre-AI)
| Coca Cola Christmas Ad, but it's not disturbing or
| particularly bad. Feels like people are just jumping on the
| "AI ads bad" bandwagon.
| sssilver wrote:
| > If AI frees up VFX artists so they can work on movies
| rather than commercials, I'm all for that.
|
| This isn't how it works. Excel didn't free up bookkeepers to
| become CFOs. Digital photography didn't free up photo lab
| technicians to become cinematographers.
|
| The person who in 1970 would have been an accountant at Ford
| Motor Company with a pension and a mortgage is now, displaced
| by Excel, working at two burger joints to make ends meet,
| with no realistic path to anything better. The VFX artists
| will follow in the exact same footsteps. The shareholders
| will keep the difference, as they have time and again.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _This isn't how it works._
|
| It absolutely is how it works. You've got your economics
| wrong.
|
| Your analogies are wrong because you're talking about
| people getting massive promotions.
|
| I'm talking about doing the exact same job, just for a
| different type of company.
|
| Also, you realize that accountants still exist and it's a
| well-paying job? They just use Excel now. They're not
| "working at two burger joints".
| mikkupikku wrote:
| > _If AI frees up VFX artists so they can work on movies
| rather than commercials, I 'm all for that._
|
| If they've run out of bread, let them eat cake.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _If they 've run out of bread, let them eat cake._
|
| Genuinely don't know what you're talking about.
|
| There's massive demand in Hollywood for good VFX people.
| It's not some luxury job or something...?
| doph wrote:
| There's a reason nearly all of the old guard VFX studios
| were driven to bankruptcy over the last decade and it
| doesn't have anything to do with massive demand for
| talent.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yes, the reason was massive underbidding and fixed-bid
| contracts that would overrun. In other words,
| mismanagement.
|
| There still aren't enough senior-level VFX artists in a
| Hollywood. It continues to be a blocker.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| There's demand for VFX artists like there's demand for
| video game developers; so many people want to do it that
| it drives wages down and there's demand for _even
| cheaper_ labor. Nobody dreams of making TV commercials,
| movies are what people want to make.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yes there are so many people that want to do it.
| Unfortunately, they're mostly junior-level. There
| continues to be a real shortage of senior-level VFX
| talent.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Okay, so the junior VFX guys who could only get jobs
| making commercials should, now that there is less demand
| for them to make commercials, go make movies instead?
| Make it make sense.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Why are you assuming it's the junior VFX guys making
| commercials? Commercials have big budgets too.
|
| It's the same studios. They do work both for Hollywood
| and ad agencies.
|
| But if ad agencies decide they're happier with lower-
| quality AI for 5% of the price (whereas they weren't if
| junior artists were still 50% of the price), while movie
| producers are not, then _yes_. They can make movies
| instead.
|
| Does that "make sense" enough for you...?
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Okay, so the senior VFX artist who has the experience to
| get a job in the movie industry if he wants it, instead
| gets a job in the commercial industry because the pay is
| better or maybe he just prefers it, now has to work in
| the movie industry contrary to his preferences.
|
| No matter which way you slice it, you're not doing
| anybody a favor by eliminating their job. People
| generally already work the best job they can manage to
| and by eliminating that job you're making them pick
| another job they otherwise wouldn't have picked, or worse
| and more often, leaving them without a job because they
| were already working in the best job they were qualified
| for.
|
| The whole _" now that these jobs have been eliminated,
| the former workers are free to find a new job!"_ thing is
| bullshit cope. Always has been. They were already free to
| chose another job, and chose the one you think you're
| 'freeing' them from. You're not giving them choice,
| you're taking it from them.
| rsynnott wrote:
| There's a link to the ad in the article (the linked text "The
| Advert"). It is, indeed, astonishingly bad, even for AI slop.
| t0lo wrote:
| Executive dysfunction
| chromehearts wrote:
| McSlop
| macintux wrote:
| It seems like a statement from The Sweetshop, who made the ad,
| has also been pulled.
|
| This piece links to a Futurism article[0], which in turn links to
| "an incredibly defensive statement"[1] from the ad agency.
|
| > "For seven weeks, we hardly slept, with up to 10 of our in-
| house AI and post specialists at The Gardening Club [our in-house
| AI engine] working in lockstep with the directors," Sweetshop's
| CEO wrote.
|
| (Sounds more like sweatshop than sweetshop, but I digress.)
|
| However, that "defensive statement" link is broken, and I see no
| sign of it on the linked site, but I did find this older
| lamentation[2] from The Sweetshop regarding AI, or more
| specifically regarding the attitude that AI should allow you to
| cut costs and fire people.
|
| > Being asked to cut 20-30% of creative costs and labour under
| the banner of 'AI' is unimaginative at best, and corrosive at
| worst. It drains the value of human creativity and concentrates
| it in fewer and fewer hands, hollowing out the very industry it
| claims to improve.
|
| [0] https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/mcdonalds-ai-
| ge...
|
| [1] https://lbbonline.com/news/melanie-bridge-sweetshop-the-
| gard... (missing page, and the Wayback Machine doesn't have a
| copy)
|
| [2] https://lbbonline.com/news/Damn-The-Race-to-the-Bottom-AI-
| Sh...
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Seems like one could have created a cheaper, higher quality ad
| with real actors.
|
| Of course, real actors have unions and part of the point of AI
| is to make labor weaker.
| falcor84 wrote:
| As I see it, the purpose of AI is the same as the purpose of
| every technology ever since the hand axe - to reduce labor.
| Humans have a strong drive to figure out ways to achieve more
| with less effort.
|
| Obviously there are higher order effects, but same as we
| wouldn't expect the Homo Erectus to stop playing with stone
| tools because they'd disrupt their society (which of course
| they did), I don't understand why we should decide to halt
| technological progress now.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I'm not sure what from my comment suggested pausing
| technological progress, unless you assume technical
| progress can only be achieved by exploiting workers. While
| that is happening, I don't think this it is a requirement.
|
| What we see happening in the workforce with AI isn't
| reducing labor. We see firms making fewer workers do more
| work and laying off the rest, as in this case, where
| workers are talking about "hardly sleeping". Similarly, in
| my org, workers aren't expected to do any less work since
| adopting AI tools. This case suggests quality is down as
| well, but maybe that's subjective.
| rpdillon wrote:
| I mean, we're watching the world try to figure out how to
| use a new set of tools. As with so many disruptive
| technologies, the initial stages of development appear to
| be drop in quality and inferior to the status quo. That
| usually reverses within five to ten years.
|
| That said, I agree with you that AI is not going to lead
| to people doing less work, in the same way that computers
| didn't lead to people doing less work.
| falcor84 wrote:
| I don't see any evidence of worker exploitation being
| caused in any even semi-direct way by AI integration. In
| the field of animation and VFX in particular, while I've
| never worked in that area myself, essentially everyone
| I've heard talk about it over decades has mentioned
| unbearable crunch being routine.
|
| You mentioned earlier that AI makes labor weaker, but I
| really don't see a case for it. If anything, given how
| relatively cheap GenAI is, it should allow most anyone
| with artistic sensibilities and skill in the area who is
| willing to leverage it to go into business themselves
| with minimal capital. Why should GenAI give power to
| employers, especially if they're just paying another
| company for the AI models?
| rsynnott wrote:
| This seems a bit like trying to replace stone axes with
| axes made out of pottery, though. Neolithic pottery, of
| course, had its uses, but didn't make for a good axe. This
| is clearly worse than actually doing the job properly in
| every conceivable way.
|
| I'm not convinced that generative AI video will _ever_ hit
| the 'acceptable' threshold, at least with current tech.
| Fundamentally it lacks a world model, so you get all this
| nightmarish _wrongness_.
| nhod wrote:
| So let's add a world model!
| mistrial9 wrote:
| you completely forgot to include the technologies invented
| to enslave, imprison and monitor labor. Back to the library
| you!
|
| ps- include the technology built to kill the enemy-labor in
| large numbers. Start with the Atomic Bomb in Japan.. that
| saved a lot of labor, right?
| falcor84 wrote:
| Well, obviously it's not the most representative example,
| but yes, if a country intends to kill hundreds of
| thousands of people, then an atomic bomb is probably the
| most cost-effective way, even after accounting for R&D.
| Moreover, if the calculus is how to win the war with the
| lowest number of additional lives lost, the atomic bombs
| dropped on Japan were quite likely significantly less
| deadly, even when comparing just against the expected
| number of Japanese civilian casualties from the
| alternative scenario of a Normandy-like invasion of
| Japan.
|
| EDIT: It's worth saying that humans have been killing
| each other from the dawn of humanity. Studies on both
| present-day and historical tribal societies generally
| show a significantly higher homicide rate than what we're
| used to seeing in even our most dangerous cities and
| across our biggest wars.
|
| A bit old, but extensive numbers -
| https://ourworldindata.org/ethnographic-and-
| archaeological-e...
| palmotea wrote:
| > As I see it, the purpose of AI is the same as the purpose
| of every technology ever since the hand axe - to reduce
| labor. Humans have a strong drive to figure out ways to
| achieve more with less effort.
|
| Yes.
|
| > Obviously there are higher order effects, but same as we
| wouldn't expect the Homo Erectus to stop playing with stone
| tools because they'd disrupt their society (which of course
| they did), I don't understand why we should decide to halt
| technological progress now.
|
| The difference is the relationship of that technology to
| the individual/masses. When a Homo Erectus invented a tool,
| _he_ and _every member of his species_ (who learned of it)
| directly benefited from the technology, but with capitalism
| that link has been broken. Now Homo Sapiens can invent
| technologies that may greatly benefit a few, but will be
| broadly harmful to individuals. AI is likely one of those
| technologies, as its on the direct path to the elimination
| broad classes of jobs with no replacement.
|
| This situation would be very different if we either had
| some kind of socialism or a far more egalitarian form of
| capitalism (e.g. with extremely diffuse and widespread
| ownership).
| falcor84 wrote:
| I think you might have an overly noble view of Homo
| Erectus. I believe that a fellow member of the species is
| at least as likely to get that hand axe smashed into
| their skull as they're likely to benefit from it.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| The attempts by both this outfit and the one that did the Coke
| ad to walk the line of simultaneously touting what a labor
| saving device these models are while also trying desperately to
| make it seem like they did some actual work somewhere so they
| can also be respected as creatives is honestly hilarious.
|
| Like I thought the whole point of these stupid things was that
| any John Q off the street could make awesome videos? If that's
| the case, then what in the utter hell is the point of a making
| of video featuring people playing at being creative?
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _Like I thought the whole point of these stupid things was
| that any John Q off the street could make awesome videos?_
|
| Have you played around with stuff like sora 2 or veo 3 or
| seen the work of regular John Q's who have? In general, the
| quality of marketing for AI tools is far better than the
| quality of AI-generated video. These tools are also kinda
| expensive for the average John Q off the street...
|
| I also think most people greatly underestimate just how much
| creativity is required to make a good movie, or how hard it
| can be to direct.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Counterpoint: a blind monkey could have accidentally made a
| better commercial than this one by entering random letters
| into an AI prompt.
| mingus88 wrote:
| The editors of the AI clips haven't figured out yet that you
| can just train a second LLM to act as editor
|
| They are the labor equivalent of the factory manager that is
| dutifully working for the bosses that are working to close
| the factory.
| scandox wrote:
| As bad as this is in conception and execution what I see is a
| blip on a path towards the new normal.
| ablation wrote:
| Feels like a trial balloon. Yes, this one went badly. It was
| awful slop. But there will be another. And another. And I feel
| like for most people catching an ad on TV, the realisation that
| AI made it will decrease or won't bother them over time. The
| frog will be boiled.
| xnorswap wrote:
| Those "trial balloons" happened years ago, this is only news
| because it was pulled and because it was a pretty bad advert
| anyway. Coca-cola had some backlash for its use of AI in
| adverts ages ago and carried on anyway.
|
| There's tons of gen-AI in adverts and most of it isn't
| newsworthy. The frog is stewed.
| ourmandave wrote:
| If they can get to "normal". This was so uncanny valley and
| disjointed it was like a preview to a horror movie.
| nobleach wrote:
| Perhaps. Watching my GenZ kids react to AI commercials during
| the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, there was general
| revulsion. It seems many of them are seeking authenticity not
| uncanny. I know this would be an anathema in a board room where
| the cost of producing an amazing commercial via AI would make a
| C-suite sparkle with delight. No paid actors? No sound stage?
| No reshoots?
|
| And yet, my kids reject it. It's odd. This is coming from a guy
| who loved watching frogs belch out the name of a beer company
| in the 90s....
| phatfish wrote:
| This is going to end in an plague of video marketing material,
| the sort of professional looking creation that is too expensive
| currently to get wrong so the same advert is shown for months
| and sometimes repeated yearly.
|
| Big brands are going to push multiple different adverts per
| week to a single market to see what sticks.
|
| Get ready for the assault.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I've yet to see AI-generated video which _doesn't_ have this
| sort of problem; everything moves unnaturally and physics
| doesn't work properly. Unless it can shed that nightmarish
| quality, it's DOA, and it's not at all clear that it _can_, via
| current techniques.
|
| I would actually wonder if AI generation of 3d models and
| movement instructions, coupled with a conventional physics
| engine, might be more viable, though it would obviously rule
| out attempts at photorealistic stuff.
| rprend wrote:
| Yep, they call them World Models. Here's the cutting edge:
| https://www.worldlabs.ai/blog/marble-world-model
|
| Google deepmind is working on one too.
| erikig wrote:
| Having spent enough time with marketing and PR folks, I really
| wouldn't be surprised if this supposed backlash is overhyped as a
| way to get more people interested in seeing the ad.
| zemo wrote:
| they want more people to see it so they removed it from
| YouTube?
| swarnie wrote:
| I've encountered far too many people who actively seek out
| ads or look forward to them, people I usually respect, its
| baffling.
| edwin2 wrote:
| they probably understand it's impossible (or very hard) to
| fully delete viral content and that it'd get re-shared
|
| PLUS they double dip as they get extra search traffic for
| their brand from people trying to find the video
|
| the forbidden fruit is more enticing
| Ekaros wrote:
| If I was cynical marketer I would say make a couple of
| copies. And then pull it from your channel. Then spread those
| on social media.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| If I was a cynical troll I would generate something
| ghastly, spread it on social media, and claim it was from
| McDonalds.
|
| https://www.facebook.com/reel/1184701899747516
| kakacik wrote:
| Outrage and clickbait has more than one form and it works
| surprisingly well on masses, part of orange mans success
| story. Just look at us discussing it, it wouldn't happen with
| (much more costly) normal MCD ad.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| It worked
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| If this was intentional PR, then someone wildly misread the
| room
| lizardking wrote:
| Beyond the critique of the AI slop, what a rotten message that
| was. If their goal was to bum me out, they were successful.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| Mickey D's disses Christmas.
|
| Was the concept created by AI?
| hasbot wrote:
| No way _anyone_ wants to hang out at McDonald 's. If they're
| trying to make McDonald's a third space they need to do some
| remodeling first. Restaurants aren't warm and appealing; they're
| hard and easy to clean.
| fidotron wrote:
| The one near me is always full of old people just hanging out.
| They use it in a similar way to many kids with starbucks, but
| they speak to each other instead of using laptops.
| koakuma-chan wrote:
| Every McDonald's in North America I have been in had homeless
| people sleeping in it. I also actually worked at McDonald's
| and we would have to call ambulance every now and then
| because someone got high and passed out or something in the
| washroom.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Then you've probably only been to/worked at McDonald's in
| the built-up parts of major cities.
|
| McDonald's in the suburbs and more rural areas and smaller
| cities are quite pleasant. Spacious, clean, just local
| folks.
|
| If your local McDonald's has a homeless person problem,
| then all your local fast food franchises do. It's a social
| services problem, not a McDonald's problem.
| freedomben wrote:
| Exactly my experience. I've been to a lot of McDonald's
| everywhere from rural to old inner city, and the
| difference is Stark. The more rural locations tend to be
| clean and relatively comfortable and enjoyable to be in.
| The inner city locations tend to be dirty, crowded, and
| generally not very pleasant to be in.
|
| And it's not just McDonald's, as you mentioned. I've
| observed the exact same thing with Wendy's and many other
| restaurants as well.
|
| There are of course plenty of exceptions. It's perfectly
| possible to find a dirty uncomfortable restaurant in a
| rural area, and it's also not difficult to find a nice
| comfortable place in the inner city. But generally
| speaking the above is what I have observed most
| paleotrope wrote:
| Basically, "Clean with a hose" decor.
| antonymoose wrote:
| As others have suggested, you have a narrowly scoped view of
| the world and the use of McDonalds in it. While my city
| slicking McDonalds trips are usually not great, for many it's
| actually very good.
|
| Photographer and author Chris Arnade has written fairly
| extensively of his travels around the "forgotten" parts of
| America, which frequently lands him in McDonald's stores that
| do serve as a community third-space,
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jun/08/mcdonalds-c...
| hasbot wrote:
| I can't believe you'd bring up one article written nine years
| ago! "Narrowly scoped!" Give me a break, you know nothing
| about the scope of my travels. Please don't make assumptions
| and condescensions about people you don't know.
| snypher wrote:
| >No way anyone wants to hang out at McDonald's.
|
| My anecdotal experience says they do. So what makes our
| observations different?
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| Yeah, it's tough to sell "gather here for warmth" when the
| chairs feel like they were engineered to speed-run customer
| turnover
| MisterTea wrote:
| > As quoted in Futurism, she said the production process took
| "seven weeks" where the team "hardly slept" and created
| "thousands of takes - then shaped them in the edit just as we
| would on any high-craft production".
|
| How else are you going to justify what I assume is a 5-6 figure
| invoice for essentially doing nothing.
|
| > "This wasn't an AI trick," she said. "It was a film."
|
| Unfortunately you can't trick us with this nonsense. I am pretty
| sure no editing software was used beyond hammering on a prompt
| for a weekend.
| camillomiller wrote:
| >>This wasn't an AI trick," she said. "It was a film."
|
| Even this statement reeks of chatGPT.
| ablation wrote:
| I must say, my first thought was ChatGPT's signature writing
| style coming through loud and clear in that statement.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| What is especially bad about this ad? To me it seems no worse
| than the infernal Paintin Manning ad from last year or the State
| Farm Megan Trainor ad this year. If this was on rotation in NFL
| games it wouldn't make me scramble for the mute button any faster
| than other ads.
| bavarianbob wrote:
| I thought similarly to you, until I saw it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abRie4vAvJ4
| nixass wrote:
| I still cannot see the bad part
| dymk wrote:
| I am legitimately sorry
| alamortsubite wrote:
| Have you ever ridden a bike over a canal? The ad was pushed
| in front of a lot of people who have. I thought it was
| creepy throughout, but I can't believe they used that clip
| up front.
| jamesbfb wrote:
| It almost seems intentionally AI? If anything, if my job at
| Maccas...ahem, McDonald's (sorry, spot the Aussie) is in
| marketing, I'd expect to to be promptly fired if this wasn't
| expected to pass for anything less than satire.
| NuclearPM wrote:
| Do you have children's names for other restaurants?
| kraquepype wrote:
| Yeah, seeing it just once it looks like an ad with a terrible
| premise.
|
| It certainly has an AI feel to it though, and I'm sure the
| more times you see it the more it falls apart.
|
| On 1st watch the part that sticks out is the couple sitting
| by a window, who seem to be somehow sitting both inside AND
| outside at the same time.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Well, for a start it's a bad concept, but also the actual
| images are kinda nightmarish. The living teddy bear is
| particularly off-putting. And it's very obviously AI slop;
| physics is at best a mild suggestion.
| soco wrote:
| I have taken it as a tongue in cheek reference to the current
| AI slop discussions, so like purposefully made sloppy.
| Appropriate joke? Apparently not, according to the masses.
| Well, just a matter of taste.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean, it's _possible_ they were aiming for "so bad it's
| good", missed, and ended up at just "really, really bad", I
| suppose. In practice, conscious attempts at "so bad it's
| good" virtually never work out; it is a thing which
| happens, not which is deliberately done.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| The difference is that those ads were annoying on purpose
| jumpocelot wrote:
| What is the actual complaint here? Are people demanding
| commercials be beautiful? Before being AI slop, it is marketing
| slop. Why are they demanding 'soul' from an ad in 2025?
| Everything in this late-stage capitalist landscape is slop. They
| could have filmed it with real actors (or just reprised a spot
| from 15 years ago) and it wouldn't make any difference.
| input_sh wrote:
| Because it's the TV yelling at you something along the lines of
| "Hey look, we replaced the creativity of dozens of people with
| this shitty result from a prompt, your job is next."
|
| The fact that it's _so bad_ that it obviously doesn 't adhere
| to any sort of quality standards we expect from humans is just
| adding an insult to injury. It tells people "AI doesn't even
| need to be better at your job than you to replace you."
| em-bee wrote:
| AI never needed to be better, it only needs to be cheaper.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Companies generally want their ads to not be horribly off-
| putting.
|
| > They could have filmed it with real actors (or just reprised
| a spot from 15 years ago) and it wouldn't make any difference.
|
| I mean, it was conceptually bad to start with, but also it has
| a lot of unsettling AI video stuff (in particular, broken
| physics) that you wouldn't get with a real ad.
| pryelluw wrote:
| It's just a bad ad. People don't want to hear a multinational
| corporation singing about Christmas being shitty. Whatever ad
| company made this should be forced to work retail during the
| season.
| brazukadev wrote:
| If the budget was USD10k it is actually good.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > As quoted in Futurism, she said the production process took
| "seven weeks" where the team "hardly slept" and created
| "thousands of takes - then shaped them in the edit just as we
| would on any high-craft production".
|
| This isn't really a field where you get points for effort. The
| end product was extremely bad, which is ultimately what matters.
| dymk wrote:
| On top of it being visually unappealing, I hate ads that take the
| misanthrope route to appeal to people's worst nature. Wow, you
| hate Christmas, thanks McD.
| bgbntty2 wrote:
| As much as I hate McDonalds and think they should go bankrupt,
| and as much as I hate ads in general, I enjoyed this one. It's
| funny, it has lots of small clips of things going wrong one after
| the other. Compared to the standard corporate ads with a long
| family- and Jesus-oriented message that pretend to give some
| significance to Christmas besides how it affects their profits,
| this one is bold and different.
|
| Who cares if it's made by AI and has obvious mistakes? It's not
| the new Star Wars movie where it's expected to focus on VFX
| issues. It's an ad - a 30 second clip that will run for a while
| to get people to buy products. If you can make an ad with AI for
| less money, why do it without AI?
|
| As for the message - we need more of this. It's kind of a taboo
| to hate Christmas, but I loathe it and everything about it. And
| so do many people. Maybe they won't say that in the office or
| around religious family members, but we do exist.
|
| You can't escape the shitty Christmas jingles that start in late
| November in almost all stores. You can't escape The tacky
| decorations, especially the blinking lights. If you mention the
| wasteful spending of taxpayer money on city decorations, people
| look at you as if you're crazy. You have to fight the implied
| obligation to participate in the celebration and to exchange
| gifts; having to tell people not to buy me anything. And the
| religious aspect of it, even though it started as a pagan holiday
| - people showing off how Christian they are even though a lot of
| them only remember their faith in twice a year. And finally, the
| commercialization of it - corporations pretending to care about
| it while trying to make everyone buy more products...
| IAmBroom wrote:
| It's funny, but shitty in attitude. It makes a great viral
| parody. It does not sell hamburgers.
|
| That poster of a duck with a sledgeghammer getting ready to
| "PRESS ANY KEY" made me laugh, but IBM didn't put it out.
|
| And to your point about AI: yeah, irrelevant. The ad sucks
| regardless.
| bgbntty2 wrote:
| I agree it's not an effective ad for most people and will
| likely damage their brand. Shitty ad from a business
| perspective. One more reason to like it.
| HelloUsername wrote:
| > That poster of a duck with a sledgeghammer getting ready to
| "PRESS ANY KEY" made me laugh, but IBM didn't put it out.
|
| I can't find anything; can you show us?
| bombcar wrote:
| https://deadon.wordpress.com/2007/10/09/ask-tuffy-hit-any-
| ke...
|
| It was a prehistoric meme in the day.
| hkpack wrote:
| > Who cares
|
| I think this sums up the feeling about this new era. Indeed,
| who cares?
|
| Empathy is the biggest sin according to our new elites.
|
| By the end of the day when you don't care enough, you may
| finally start enjoying this AI slop.
| bgbntty2 wrote:
| Empathy towards what, in this case?
| port11 wrote:
| Each other.
|
| Christmas is a holiday of the family, especially if you
| reject the consumerist overtones. It's -- for me -- a
| lovely week of spending time together, eating too much, and
| watching bad old movies.
|
| I really like everything about that atmosphere, so the
| McDonald's ad felt shitty, heartless, and cynical. Why
| bother making the holidays better for others, just come to
| McDo!
| afavour wrote:
| > It's an ad - a 30 second clip that will run for a while to
| get people to buy products. If you can make an ad with AI for
| less money, why do it without AI?
|
| > Who cares
|
| If it has mistakes and is overall a shitty ad I imagine it'll
| be less persuasive in getting people to buy the product. I have
| to imagine someone cares very much about that.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| OMG! The song is literally called "The Most Terrible Time of the
| Year"!
|
| They managed to say something disheartening to everyone on Earth
| except first-act Scrooges and Grinches. Doubt Ebenezier ever set
| foot in a McDonald's, and Grinch never left his mountaintop home,
| so... [Yes, I know not everyone celebrates Christmas, but that
| song title is just a massive dump on your day, regardless.]
|
| What's their next marketing step? "Everything causes cancer, so
| you might as well get it from McDonald's!"
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| The song title basically ensured the audience would bounce
| before the uncanny eyeballs even appeared
| sublinear wrote:
| This is one of those moments that will look silly in the future.
|
| The ad sucks because it's cynical and poorly made. People would
| have complained on this basis alone. The ad also sucks because
| current generative AI is mass plagiarism.
|
| I am pretty sure all this nuance will be lost on people of the
| future though. Even right now video ads don't reach audiences
| like they used to. Maybe that will be another layer for people to
| fail to wrap their heads around and laugh about.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| Consumers have a surprisingly good nose for when something was
| made to save time instead of to say something meaningful
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| How do you explain that an ad agency gets a contract from
| macdonalds and goes cheap on it? Is it greed or is it stupidity?
| joshstrange wrote:
| It's a bad ad and the AI just makes it worse. The song doesn't
| rhyme well, the lyrics doesn't make much sense (they feel very
| forced), the things they portray are mostly
| unrealistic/exaggerated, and the cherry on top is that McDonalds
| is somehow a respite from the chaos of Christmas. I've never once
| in my life thought of McD as somewhere comforting to go. It's
| just a bad ad period.
|
| Also, no one wants a bad (probably also AI-generated) song about
| how terrible Christmas is. I'm not saying it's not terrible but
| no one wants a song about it.
| b3ing wrote:
| Other than the clips/scenes being short I couldn't tell too much
| that it was AI.
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| It seems that when you're selling fast food you're in a world
| very far away from the one where livelihoods are being threatened
| by AI
| lbreakjai wrote:
| Not if your customer base can't afford to eat your food because
| they lost their jobs to AI.
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| Just watched it, the uncanny valley is a perfect match for their
| simulacra of food.
| jmclnx wrote:
| What can I say, I thought it was funny. But seeing it over and
| over could get annoying.
| ComplexSystems wrote:
| I am as tired of AI slop as everyone else but I think the
| backlash to this is way too exaggerated. Commercials are already
| "slop." There is no expectation of quality at all. The average
| Christmas commercial involves a bunch of elves singing "Taking
| Care of Business" while dancing in front of office supplies.
|
| This commercial sucked because nobody wants to hear "it's the
| most terrible time of year." I don't really care if they used AI.
| port11 wrote:
| I think this one was especially bad because a massive
| corporation can't be arsed to do better. Like, Apple
| exaggerates a lot on their advertising, but at least there's
| some heart to it. (Coming from someone that doesn't like
| Apple.)
| danielbln wrote:
| Unless they do an ad where they literally crush creativity
| into a thin slab, an ad they had to later apologize for.
| Pepperage Farm remembers.
| ronsor wrote:
| People care way too much about this.
|
| Ads suck, in general. They're slop whether a human or an AI
| made it, and I don't want or care about them regardless.
| danielbln wrote:
| So don't. But if mega corps want to juice our brains with
| their slop, to the degree that it's difficult to escape
| it, then we should also be able to sneer at the ads that
| miss the mark even more than usual.
| ronsor wrote:
| You're foolishly giving them attention. Marketing teams
| know this.
|
| If an ad is bad, it's better to ignore it and not write
| news articles about some marketing-fabricated
| controversy. Now you're thinking about McDonalds, which
| is what they wanted! They don't actually expect you to
| buy a burger tomorrow because of this.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| Exactly. Most ads are cringy and rubbish. This concept could
| easily have been made with real actors and a VFX crew and been
| equally as shitty.
|
| I find people complaining about bad ads odd. Do people want
| good ads? Do they want to be engaged as they're being sold
| Pepsi? I work hard to avoid ads, their quality isn't even a
| factor for me.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| For some reason dutch advertising agencies went all-in on AI.
| There are tons of local commercials using the most terrible
| generated content and voiceovers.
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