[HN Gopher] French supermarket's Christmas advert is worldwide h...
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French supermarket's Christmas advert is worldwide hit (without AI)
[video]
Author : gbugniot
Score : 166 points
Date : 2025-12-11 13:35 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| jsheard wrote:
| OP is the original upload, but the agency reposted it with
| English subs after it got popular outside of France:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLERt5ZkpQ4
| deltarholamda wrote:
| You can tell it's great visual storytelling because you don't
| even need to know the words.
|
| I guess the McDonald's ad didn't need words either, but it was
| just depressing and awful.
| Extropy_ wrote:
| What was the McDonald's ad? Could you drop a link, perhaps?
| troyvit wrote:
| Here's a guardian link that tells the story and includes
| the ad: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/dec/11/mc
| donalds-r...
| Extropy_ wrote:
| Cheers bro!
| Sprotch wrote:
| Thank you! Goodness, that ad made me want to barf
| alwayseasy wrote:
| 366k views in 4 days hardly qualifies as a worldwide hit. It's
| decent, but other ads saw more views faster this year, like that
| American Eagle ad with Sweeney.
|
| It's hard to measure on Youtube due to the weight of paid views
| but still.
|
| Anyway, it's a cute ad.
| jsheard wrote:
| I think it mostly blew up via unofficial reposts, since that
| original version was in French without subtitles.
|
| This one copy on X has 27 million views after 2 days:
| https://x.com/pawcord/status/1998361498713038874
| alwayseasy wrote:
| Ok thanks, this changes things! X exagerates how it counts
| views but overall I do believe millions saw it.
| wyldfire wrote:
| C'est bon! Charming video.
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| Major pet peeve of mine is when people unironically spread
| literal advertisements, whether it's because they're "cute" or
| people are outraged at them or whatever it may be.
|
| The ad is doing it on purpose. It is literally manipulating you
| and you are spreading the malicious influence to other people.
| It's not AI but it sure is 'slop'. Propaganda, even.
|
| ...slopagada
| stfp wrote:
| True the vast majority of the time. This ad though doesn't
| promote anything malicious. It's a cute story with the message
| "eat healthy stuff like vegetables and fish", with a brand
| name/ logo at the very end.
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| You think the company went "ah forget about profit, we'll
| spend our money for the good of the people"?
|
| The company is virtue signaling, pandering, and you're
| falling for it. Jesus Christ.
| pcrh wrote:
| Bah! Humbug!
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| "You know, I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that
| when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain
| that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you
| know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss."
|
| Enjoy your simulated steak.
| seszett wrote:
| > _The company is virtue signaling_
|
| It is true!
|
| And as a (very occasional) customer, I like that this
| company is signalling that it does not oppose inclusion and
| doesn't mind questioning "traditional values" (the wolf
| eating animals).
|
| Many actors these days (both companies and political
| figures) are very much signalling the contrary, so some
| kind of signalling is absolutely useful.
| pyrale wrote:
| > The company is virtue signaling
|
| Is that the way people say "advertising" these days?
| forinti wrote:
| This time of year, cinemas show Christmas commercials, such as
| this one, but two or three in a row.
|
| It becomes funny how hard they try to move us. And in the end
| it's just for a supermarket.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's an ad by a grocery store advocating healthy eating and
| inclusion.
|
| I think people will make reasonable decisions about whether or
| not to purchase food this winter with or without the "malicious
| influence" of these ads.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The irony is that Christmas is the time for unhealthy eating
| but is it still allowed to show in ads?
|
| Personally I interpreted the fish as either a timely
| Christian symbol (and fish at Christmas is traditional in
| some places) or simply because a meat dish would not have
| worked in context.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| It is possible to have art and artist be separate things; to
| acknowledge that that reason a thing was created and/or who it
| was created by can be looked at separately from the thing
| itself. This commercial was fun to watch. The Budweiser horse
| commercials are also fun to watch. But enjoying them has very
| little to do with a choice to support the creator.
| umanwizard wrote:
| The "malicious influence" being (checks notes) spreading
| propaganda in favor of pescatarianism and healthy natural
| eating?
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| I remember a time when using computer was not well seen when
| creating art.
|
| Wasn't it even Tron who didn't qualify for the special effects
| oscar because they "used computers"?
|
| It's interesting that it's no longer "computer bad", now it's "AI
| bad".
| prodigycorp wrote:
| I think people are setting themselves up for failure if they
| index their happiness or sense of self satisfaction to their
| ability to discern what AI-generated content is or not.
|
| Soon, we'll have no idea what's AI-generated or not. I care
| about good, tight story telling.
|
| In the case of this ad.. it's okay?
| galleywest200 wrote:
| Part of watching films and animations was that seeing that a
| _human_ created this inspired the wish to create in yourself.
| When all they did was enter a prompt that takes some of the
| magic away.
|
| If all you care about is just the story then maybe you
| personally will be satisfied but a lot of people cared about
| the animations, cinematography, etc, and all of the work that
| went into that.
| phantasmish wrote:
| I think digital effects still _rarely_ look as good as the
| peak of Hollywood practical effects (call it... idk, Alien
| in 1979 through Independence Day in '96 or so, roughly, and
| yes I know ID4 also had computer fx in addition to lots of
| miniatures and models)
|
| Having to do things for-real also kept things grounded.
| Modern action movies are often cartoon-like with supposedly
| human characters stringing together super-human moves
| that'd leave a real person with dislocated shoulders,
| broken bones, and brain damage, because they're actually
| just CG, no human involved.
|
| [EDIT] OMG, or take Bullitt (1968) versus, say, the later
| Fast and the Furious sequels (everything past Tokyo Drift).
| The latter are basically Pixar's Cars with more-realistic
| textures. They're cartoons with live-action talking
| segments. Very little actual driving is depicted. Bullitt
| may have used the movie-magic of editing, but someone did
| have to _actually_ drive a car, for every shot of a car
| driving. Or at least they had to set up a car with a dummy
| to convincingly crash. What you 're seeing is heightened,
| but basically within the realm of reality.
|
| Or take _A Bridge Too Far_. It 's a bit of a mess! Make it
| CG and it'd be outright _bad_. But ho-lee-shit do they blow
| up a lot of stuff, like, you cannot even believe how much.
| And look at all those tanks and armored vehicles they got!
| And planes! And extras! Those are all 100% real! AND ALL
| THE KABOOMS! And it all looks better than CG, to boot. The
| spectacle of it (plus some solid performances) saves the
| movie. Make all the FX CG and it 'd be crap.
|
| Imagine a Jackie Chan movie with CG stunts. What is even
| the point. It'd be trash.
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| > Alien in 1979
|
| I think this might be your nostalgia. The thing looks
| different in different scenes, and there's a scene that
| feels like it's a guy inside from the way it moves. So I
| disagree that Alien is peak special effects. (still peak
| over things. Peak ambience for sure)
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| This was the argument about Fury Road (mostly real) vs
| Furiosa (a lot of CGI.)
|
| But only bad CGI is visible. I guarantee you have watched
| CGI footage and not noticed. At all.
|
| The problem over the last decade or so hasn't been the
| technical limits of CGI, but studio unwillingness to
| spend enough on it to make it good.
|
| And directors have also become less creative. You can
| find UK newsreels from the 50s on YouTube, and some of
| the direction and editing are superb - a beautiful mix of
| abstraction, framing, and narrative.
|
| Most modern directors don't have that kind of visual
| literacy. The emphasis is more on spectacle and trying to
| bludgeon audiences into submission, not on tastefulness
| and visual craft.
| troupo wrote:
| I highly recommend this 5-part essay series "NO CGI" is
| really just INVISIBLE CGI"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttG90raCNo (it starts
| with "Top Gun: Maverick").
|
| Current-era CGI is _insanely good_. The problem is that
| it 's used and abused everywhere, often with very little
| consideration for whether it's needed, or if there's time
| to do all the VFX shots etc.
| neom wrote:
| That's very romantic. The golden age of both cinema and
| animation was an assembly line, often an exploitative one.
| Most frames were the by product of industrial labor, done
| by people with little autonomy, low wages, no creative
| input... the human element was already highly concentrated
| among a _very_ small elite, and, the majority of the labor
| pool was treated as mechanical /replaceable input. "seeing
| that a human created this inspired the wish to create in
| yourself." Sure, but, it's not reeeaaally "a human did it."
| It is more "a small number of visible artists did it."
| seinecle wrote:
| I would be interested in a book telling the history of
| cinema and animation that you describe
| neom wrote:
| https://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Line-Untold-Animation-
| Simpson... and
| https://archive.org/details/hollywoodcartoon00barr
| prodigycorp wrote:
| Good film making is good film making. I am a creative. I
| incorporate AI into videos that I make subtly and with a
| huge amount of care. I know I put more time and care into
| my craft than most others.
|
| Nobody knows what involved AI and what didn't. At the end
| of the day, if you care about your work, it shows.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I can almost see your point, but there are two big problems:
|
| 1) To date, there has been no example of AI that is good.
| It's not even close.
|
| And 2) Why should I be interested in a story nobody was
| interested in telling? If you don't want to make a video, or
| tell a story, or write a song, then...just don't. Why even
| have an AI do it?
| foxyv wrote:
| I think the objections with AI will change based on the
| quality of the AI generated work. What people don't want is
| to wade through a million gallons of poorly generated slop to
| see one good movie. They also don't want to have to deal with
| thousands of zero effort AI videos just to find one good
| video generated by a human being.
|
| If the actual result of AI is an unlimited supply of adequate
| media personalized to our tastes, I don't foresee there being
| any objection. Right now, it's honestly just shovelware on a
| scale that hasn't been seen before. No one likes shovelware
| except maybe toddlers.
| neom wrote:
| I lived through the end of the beginning of computer becoming a
| primary tool for art, both in building DeviantART and also I
| was in the second cohort of the first ever digital imaging and
| technology program in Canada. It was super interesting, during
| college was the release of the Canon 300D, things moved really
| quickly after, my graduating year the pro film makers
| associations introduced a ban on digital work within the
| associations "club activities" (that lasted about 16 months) -
| it was funny tho you would see people judging professional
| salons (contests) zooming in to 30000% looking for signs of
| digital editing - I was ~20 and it was all very amusing to me,
| like why did all these old people hate digital art do much? We
| persisted, bunch of us graduated and started a studio, one day
| Canon called us, I was one of the first people in the world to
| use a Canon 5D Mk2 months before it was released, my ads ended
| up on TV, we won three technical emmy awards, made lots of
| money, had a great time etc. All the people I know who rode the
| wave had fantastic careers and worked on interesting stuff,
| made money etc.(and btw, the last ones standing after all was
| said and done in the "fuck digital camp"? curmudgeons!)
|
| fwiw: I got out of that industry because it became clear
| quickly that the technology was going to enable a lot of
| skilled story tellers to become talented artists, I am a
| business/technology person who happens to be decent at story
| telling and naturally not awful at picture making - I would
| have gotten crushed by what the technologies enabled as the
| abstractions and programatic features opened up film making to
| people who didn't want to or couldn't naturally grasp the
| physics/controls. I'm grateful past me was able to think about
| this clearly because it lead me to meeting Ben and Moisey and
| joining them to go on and build DigitalOcean, one of the most
| amazing experiences of my life.
| wat10000 wrote:
| It seems fundamentally different to put in a ton of work
| building 3D models, putting together scenes, etc., versus
| typing a description into a text box and seeing what pops out.
|
| I may be wrong, but I get the sense that computer art was
| welcomed by people actually working in the field (did
| professionals criticize the computer graphics in Star Wars or
| Wrath of Khan?) and it was mostly the lay public that saw it as
| somehow not real. The opposite seems to be true for AI "art."
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| > It seems fundamentally different to put in a ton of work
| building 3D models, putting together scenes, etc., versus
| typing a description into a text box and seeing what pops
| out.
|
| People at the time also said using a computer was
| fundamentally different from putting in a ton of work into
| building physical models.
|
| A lot of tech adoption is motivated by economics, so the
| argument that "before it was more work, now it's less work"
| will almost always apply regardless of the specifics. I don't
| think it's a useful thing to focus on. It's almost a moral
| argument: I deserve it because I suffered for it, but he did
| it easy so he doesn't deserve it.
|
| In fact, I would even go further. I would say it's part of
| the definition of technology. What is technology? Technology
| is a thing or an idea, created or discovered, that makes work
| easier and/or cheaper.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I agree that it's not useful if we're looking at practical
| stuff. It doesn't matter to me if my table was built with
| ten hours of human work, or ten seconds.
|
| But for creative work? I think it matters a lot. You used
| the phrase "creating art." I don't think it counts as
| "creating" if there's no work going into it. Typing some
| words into a prompt box and getting a video out is not
| "creating," any more than doing an image search and
| printing out an image of a painting is creating a painting.
|
| Printers are extremely useful devices, but they don't
| create art.
| philistine wrote:
| It's urban myth. Tron was not disqualified because they used
| computers, it wasn't nominated because it looked terrible.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Writer and director Steven Lisberger made that claim in
| interviews, so I wouldn't quite call it an urban myth.
|
| As far as I know, any film can be submitted for Academy Award
| consideration in any category, then an executive committee
| determines the eligibility of each submission and chooses up
| to 20 films to move onto the nomination process.
|
| I don't think this committee publishes anything about its
| decision-making process, so presumably Lisberger is just
| guessing based on his impression of industry sentiment at the
| time.
| homarp wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20190105145419/https://www.sfgat.
| ..
|
| has the director saying it though.
|
| Lisberger recounts. "We did all those effects in about seven
| months, which included inventing the techniques." "Tron,"
| however, wasn't nominated for a special-effects Oscar. "The
| Academy thought we cheated by using computers," he scoffs.
| throwfaraway135 wrote:
| It is a wholesome ad, but as I don't care that my shoes are
| handmade, I also don't care if the supermarket ad is without AI.
| conartist6 wrote:
| You will when all the artists starve.
| umanwizard wrote:
| There are people who do care about both. Does that bother you?
| throwfaraway135 wrote:
| I'm ok with people caring about whatever they want. What I
| dislike is people trying to create artificial groups. Like
| "pro AI" and "anti AI" then try to sell them shit because now
| this is part of their tribe.
| kakacik wrote:
| You can also just skip advertising to whole world about
| what you dislike, and your projected dislikes of whatever
| else you need to comment on, unrelated to original topic of
| a simple ad for enjoying Christmas with others regardless
| of your origins while eating well. Nobody here is doing
| anything you complain about.
|
| People really don't care that much, especially when for
| something positive, original and funny somebody grumpy
| comes along and tries to drag discussion down their misery
| pit.
| docdeek wrote:
| Intermarche have done some other great Christmas ads on a simialr
| theme of eating better. Their 2019 ad had a kid realizing that
| Santa was too rotund to fit down their chimney, so the kid spent
| the season visiting him at the store and handing him lettuce,
| homemade vegetable preserves etc.
| https://youtu.be/DeSG2-FuQhE?si=YvCMY4fR-7K5R8Ke
| throw7 wrote:
| Ah yes. The christmas ad that has nothing to do with christmas.
| There's also a fish dish the wolf makes... great attention to
| detail there.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The ad illustrates the Christmas spirit and fish is a Christian
| religious symbol and actually traditional at Christmas in some
| countries and areas. I don't know if they did it on purpose in
| this ad or just because it would obviously not have worked for
| the wolf to bring a meat dish.
| tejohnso wrote:
| I was confused because one of the characters tells the wolf
| he might have more friends if he didn't go around killing
| animals all the time. Then the wolf starts making vegetarian
| dishes, and I thought, okay, they're promoting vegetarianism.
| Great. But then later the wolf is killing fish, and that's
| ...okay I guess because they don't talk or walk like the
| other animals? The speciesism hit hard.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| " _Fish meat is practically a vegetable_ " --Ron Swanson
| opminion wrote:
| It is all about Christmas and New Year: cooking good healthy
| food for the extended family, and new year's resolutions.
| nw05678 wrote:
| The family were sitting around the table eating dinner while
| the kids was getting a story read to him about the present he
| just received. Nothing Christmasy about that at all.
| highleaf wrote:
| Great ad, but is it a confirmation that fishes have no soul?
| Vosporos wrote:
| That's the point that made me laugh out loud yeah
| Y-bar wrote:
| Frutti di mare is fruit of the sea. Fish is flora. QED.
| vscode-rest wrote:
| It's okay to eat fish because they don't have any feelings.
| troupo wrote:
| Everywhere there are talking animals fish are never considered
| to be sentient :) Think of all the cartoons and movies (except
| those specifically about fish).
| wiether wrote:
| Intermarche owns the biggest fishing org in Franche (Scapeche),
| so they can't tell their customers to stop eating fish!
| Mr_Eri_Atlov wrote:
| Very cute and charming ad, the tail wagging at the end was great
| Zealotux wrote:
| It's a cute ad all but as a French kid I used to see similar
| things often, we have a good culture of animation. Is "they
| didn't use AI" really a criteria now?
| ekblom wrote:
| I think that comment is in response to McDonalds recent AI-
| slop-ad.
| kminehart wrote:
| And Coca Cola
| jfindper wrote:
| Advertising that you didn't use AI is definitely a thing now.
| But this is more likely a jab at the recent McDonalds ad, which
| did use AI, and which the agency who made the ad vigorously
| defended the use of AI (hilariously, by bragging about how many
| hours it took to make that ad).
| jsheard wrote:
| > vigorously defended the use of AI (hilariously, by bragging
| about how many hours it took to make that ad).
|
| Likewise with the Coca Cola ad, the agency said in their
| defense that they had to sift through 70,000 video
| generations to assemble the few dozen shots in the final ad.
| And after all that sifting they still couldn't get the one
| element of continuity (the Coke truck) to look consistent
| from shot to shot, and had to manually composite over all of
| the Coke logos since the model kept mangling them.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > Is "they didn't use AI" really a criteria now?
|
| Absolutely. Have you been living under a rock? /jk ;-)
| wiether wrote:
| I don't watch TV and use ad-blockers on my devices so I don't
| have a clue of what ads look like nowadays.
|
| And given how people are praising this one (that looks
| exactly like the ones I was used to growing up) I can only
| guess that the situation must be awful.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Very cute, and full of humorous touches. Worth sharing, for a
| change (when compared to the vast majority of ads).
| binary132 wrote:
| As a wolf, I find this advertisement very offensive to
| carnitarians. Prey animals were clearly made for our use and
| enjoyment, and the idea of some sort of multi-special gathering,
| finding a least common denominator in the predation of pescids
| (simply absurd for a canid), is insulting to our way of life and
| frankly racist.
| brohee wrote:
| Actually, some wolves are mostly pescetarian
| https://www.dangerrangerbear.com/the-sea-wolf/ ;)
| binary132 wrote:
| Whoa! 7.5 miles is a long swim. Thanks for the interesting
| article. Just so you know, that article says "During the
| salmon and herring spawning seasons, nearly one-quarter of
| this coastal wolf's diet is fish" so I don't think it
| supports your claim, exactly.
| systems wrote:
| and by worldwide hit, do they mean europe and few americans?
|
| its not a bad ad, but nothing about it is worldwide
| stronglikedan wrote:
| The little tail wag as he brought his bounty to the table was a
| nice touch (my fav in fact), and something that AI might have
| missed.
| netfortius wrote:
| Source: Montpellier company: https://www.illogicstudios.com/
|
| Interesting, especially as the city is also host to some of the
| best gaming developers.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I remember a french comic called Le loup en slip (literally the
| wolf in underwear), was it by any chance made by the same
| artists? Both the style and story have a lot in common.
| throwacct wrote:
| Hehe. People have "AI" fatigue (I'll include myself there, too),
| not only because AI content "feels" soulless, but also because
| the looming job displacement narrative, exacerbated by CEOs, VCs,
| etc. There'll be a big consumer pushback against companies using
| AI to lay off employees, etc
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> There'll be a big consumer pushback against companies using
| AI to lay off employees, etc_
|
| No there won't. Same how there was no consumer pushback when
| everything from your Nikes to Apple computers moved to be made
| in China by slave labor and gutted your manufacturing industry
| at the same time while consumers and shareholders cheered.
|
| Consumers only care about value for money not where or how a
| product is made. People's morals go out the window when their
| hard earned paycheque is on the line. Capitalist competition is
| dehumanizing by nature. The only thing that can help maintain
| humanity is government regulation because expecting consumers
| to prioritize morality over price has always failed.
|
| If AI companies give consumers the same product but cheaper,
| they'll win.
| throwacct wrote:
| Interesting. I agree with you that consumers prioritize price
| over morality, but not when their livelihood is directly or
| indirectly negatively affected by AI, and the people are
| starting to notice it.
| jack_tripper wrote:
| _> but not when their livelihood is directly or indirectly
| negatively affected by AI, and the people are starting to
| notice it._
|
| And do what about it? People don't give a shit AI is
| replacing creators jobs same how people didn't give a shit
| automation or offshoring replaced blue collar jobs.
| Literally nobody cared when the actors and writers went on
| strike so nobody will care when they'll be replaced by AI.
|
| Especially when the quality of human made entertainment has
| been on a steep decline over the last 10 years consumers
| will even cheer to see them replaced same how they cheered
| when they could buy higher quality Japanese made cars at
| lower prices.
| TheCycoONE wrote:
| I have strong Tawney Scrawny Lion and Un loup dans le potager
| vibes from this commercial. Delightful.
| fasteo wrote:
| cute ad. Too bad wolves are hypercarnivores. They won't survive
| without a heavy-meat diet
| nine_k wrote:
| The best ad for diversity and inclusion I've seen so far.
| epolanski wrote:
| The video itself might not be generated, but who knows about the
| script (quite generic Christmas Carol, Shrek, Wolf trope), the
| character design, the models, the animations, etc?
|
| edit: getting downvoted to hell, but I think my question is
| valid. What does it mean "no AI"? Are we just limiting ourselves
| to the render?
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