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All according to the plan.

Release an AI ad, knowing full well it will cause a lot of headlines and people talking/hating it, based on what happened with the coke ad.

Then remove the ad due to "backlash" and say something like "We listened to you, our dear customers, so sowwy for the AI slop, we the good guys"

BAM! Now you have half the world talking about the ad and making everyone think about McDonald's.

I personally would have probably never even seen that ad if not for all the headlines and posts.

I was talking to my gf the other day (yes, she’s real) who has a graphic design degree and we both theorized that these companies who use AI video generation still need a graphics design expert in hand so that, that expert can point out the flaws and have them fixed before they start airing the commercials. I’m thinking of that Coca Cola winter truck commercial where the truck changes its appearance in every shot. These companies really think we are that dumb…

What a wholrsome message, I wonder why it flopped?

"Screw Christmas, Screw your family, come to McDonalds. We also made this with AI you stupid bitch"

Even if wasn't AI it was still a shitty ad for expensive, mediocre food.

For fuck's sake people...

Here's the ad: https://www.adforum.com/creative-work/ad/player/34728882/its-the-most-terrible-time-of-the-year/mcdonalds

"This wasn't an AI trick," she said. "It was a film."

Nah. It really was an AI trick.

Just seems like another lousy ad, AI or not.

I have no idea what ads look like anymore, so I have nothing to compare it to. So they should have been asking, who is going to see this? Maybe they did do that and figured the demographic wouldn't care.

The ad was just as synthetic as their food. Glad they pulled it though, it was really off to watch…

I do not understand how people at these advertising agencies are so bad at their actual jobs.

I used to work in an advertising agency, the job is done by humans who go home and watch TV and play video games and generally interact with the rest of the human race on a fairly regular basis. There's no way in hell that they failed to register the public's dissatisfaction with AI. So how do they then sit in a pitch meeting and recommend its use?

I guarantee what happened here is that McDonald's wanted things to be cheap and so wanted to use AI, and the advertising agency just wanted to get McDonald's business so didn't push back on it as hard as they should have done. And look it's now done damage to their brand. They better come out with a statement real quick to clarify that it was McDonald's decision and not theirs, otherwise clients are going to be concerned that they're trying to cut corners.

Part of the job is to tell clients when they're being unreasonable. There was a property developer that we worked with a lot and he was always trying to get us to do deceptive things such as using CGI shots of his housing estate rather than the actual shots because the properties didn't look anything like what was being depicted in the CGI shots. I'm sure if we were doing it today he would be trying to use AI as well. Fortunately my boss was always able to talk him out of these decisions pointing out that it would simply result in him getting a reputation for dishonesty, and would in the long term hurt him.

On the opposite side there is this ads from intermarché, a French supermarket chain, made by real artists.

Intermarché - le mal aimé

Now I'm wondering if their meat is real. Time for me to switch to "Amburgers and Woot Beer" (A&W).

I'm sure McDs and Coke could push out terrible AI ads for the next decade and it wouldn't dampen their sales long term. An initial slump until everyone got over it, maybe. They're global brands that have gotten too damn big to fail.

Seven weeks just for slop that didn't convert a single customer.

Gross, out of all the options to "hide out" in MD would be my last choice. It's loud, smelly, sticky, and their bathrooms are dirty. That's a bad ad. Way to really miss your target audience mark.