French supermarket's Christmas advert is worldwide hit (without AI) [video]

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.

What was the McDonald's ad? Could you drop a link, perhaps?

Here's a guardian link that tells the story and includes the ad: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/dec/11/mcdonalds-r...

Cheers bro!

Thank you! Goodness, that ad made me want to barf

I thought the McD add was hilarious - I would have preferred it not be AI.

That ad looks like a concatenation of Tiktok shorts.

The ad felt like a family guy skit. And animated about as well as modern FG animation.

I guess that will speak to if you will find the ad funny or just depressing. I don't think the Ai helped either way.

I thought the McDonalds one was good and what does it matter it was AI ; mcdonalds makes artificial food and everything about the place is artificial so why not artificial ads?

Sometimes telling the truth is unwelcome I guess.

I'm pro-AI but I thought the Coca-Cola and McDonald's ads were shit. The Coke one was especially egregious because if the creators hadn't been lazy they could have made it look half-decent. Instead it's janky and inconsistent and ugly.

>artificial food

As if people are not "cooking" the exact same food bought from these supermarkets.

I don't usually make salads with 750 calories and an entire day's worth of sodium when I cook.

That's what happens when you just concatenate the output of an AI trained in Tiktok shorts …

(Which is a shame, as IA video generation can do much better if the author cares a bit about what they're doing).

It’s probably a mistake to read too much into it but I can’t help but notice the McDonald’s ad is kind of a mirror held up to all the things that American culture has been progressing into: cynical, mean, isolated, artificial... whatever the opposite of “wholesome” is. Totally off-key for what Christmas is supposed to stand for. Christmas (at least the secular holiday) is supposed to be about kindness, putting differences aside, enjoying people and family, and the commercial was pretty much the opposite of that.

I liked the McDonald's ad quite a bit because it encapsulated how I feel about this time of year - although I've never in my life eaten in a McDonald's and don't intend to start.

Looking at it I see familiar elements, which are used by an artist going by the name Gossip Goblin to draw apocalyptic visions of a humanity far in the future that, for the N-th time, almost wiped itself out via increasingly invasive body modifications.

Here in the UK, Tesco is running a pretty similar campaign to the McDonald's one (without the AI): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=711Cq8_E0oI

I think Brits tend to be more cynical than Americans, though, so it kinda tracks.

> “However, we notice – based on the social comments and international media coverage – that for many guests this period is ‘the most wonderful time of the year’.”

How to make your corporate response sound even more AI than the actual AI...

> "And here’s the part people don’t see: the hours that went into this job far exceeded a traditional shoot. Ten people, five weeks, full-time.”

If it didn't even save time, then what was the point?

Yes, it was brilliant! As for AI, who cares? It's a commercial. Laugh, and move on.

Ah the famous AI efficiency and productivity boost.

The worst part about the Coke ad is the fake "making of" video they released to show how much manual work went into their ads. The "pencil sketches" ostensibly made by humans in the making of were also AI-generated.

That ad is brutal. I feel sorry for people who experience Christmas like this.

Both because of the content, and because of the odd perspective shifts in the AI-generated footage. It made me feel like I was drunk.

Seemed pretty realistic to me!