"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
Idea for a new job:
Become an expert consultant on having just the right amount of AI bullshit in your ads to generate a ton of free engagement (like this thread) without taking away from the effect in people casually watching it who hopefully won't notice.
Seriously, discussion over this, here and elsewhere, has forced more Coca-Cola branding into my brain than I think I've seen in the past year.
Nothing says happy holidays like a statistical approximation of a truck!
Incorrect. Nothing says happy holidays like a brown, carbonated beverage that tastes vaguely like malted battery acid. It is tradition.
NOW: CONSUME PRODUCT.
unzips wallet
I am so glad you finished that with "wallet".
meat wallet
Remember: Drink water, or a similar non-coca-cola substance.
Also, a consistent truck design is something a human at any skill level would have gotten right.
But it doesn't really matter for the ad if it's the same exact truck, 99% of viewers will never notice and Coca Cola saved thousands on the production on the ad. Not saying it's good, just stating that's why they allowed the inconsistent truck into the ad.
Another point that just came to me: Ads are the most effective if the customer doesn't know about the product being advertised. Everybody already knows about Conk. (I'm referring to them as "Conk" now). So, Conk probably doesn't need that annual "Holidays are coming" ad.
And the publicity of being another AI ad.
So, legally, since AI output is public domain, Pepsi (or someone else) could theoretically take this trailer and replace all the Coke logos with Pepsi, and then republish it as theirs, couldn't they?
They could but why would they want to use such a shitty ad to sell their product?
Because it would be very funny.
For the attention? They could call it an ad campaign.
Honestly, while Pepsi isn't a great company either, if they made an ad pointing out how much "their competitor" spent in water, electricity, etc. on making an ad using AI, and then included that "since AI-generated content can't be copyrighted, we stole it and paid an intern 1 million dollars to replace the logo with our own" and then just play the ad with the trucks drawn over like in a school notebook to be blue pepsi trucks with the pepsi logo.
I think if a big company went all in on being a world-class AI hater, they'd do really well. It's kinda a huge untapped market as consumer sentiment against AI grows because it's being pushed so hard.
Pepsi absolutely would have done that in the '90s. They were hardcore into hater ads back then.
They can probably reuse the individual clips, but not this exact edit. The edit was still done by a human. AI can't produce an entire coherent sequence of different clips. Generative AI basically can't produce clips longer than 10 seconds without going wonky, it can't even transition to a different camera angle in the same clip. Also the audio and music in this ad is copyrighted.
and look at that - you advertise their product for free. Seems like AI ads worked huh
Working to get me buying local brands. Fuck Coca Cola. Long ass history of being an evil Corpo. This is just one more damn thing they're doing.
I drink water.
It's hard to avoid the Coke company though, they have their hand in almost everything.
So it is not just AI slop, it is bad AI slop. They didn't even spend the money to find someone who is capable to write the right prompts.
I love how someone put in the work to illustrate the "designs" :D Contempt can be a great motivator.
It's not pure AI, it's weirder than that.
In one of the 'behind the scenes' videos they briefly show a comfyui workflow, essentially a 'video to video' workflow. Secret Level most likely makes a very basic 3d animation for the video model to iterate on, essentially slapping on an 'AI filter'. That's probably why it took so many people too. They are using ltx-video-2b-v0.9 for those wondering.
Where the '70000 prompts' number comes from, I have no fucking idea.
Coca cola does so many more evil things than this, an AI ad is relatively nothing. I am mainly just looking into Secret Level here.
I'm now imagining the model spitting out credible trucks and them demanding botched trucks to boost engagement by people mocking the AI ness of the ads.
Free and fast will beat good and perfect everytime.
My love life in a nutshell.
Someone put it best in a post published yesterday by the Anon Opin account:
Spending tens, or even hundreds of thousands of pounds on a digital marketing ad campaign, and then using AI generated slop for the actual ads themselves, is a very expensive way of telling people you like to cut corners.
I feel like they use enough water as is.
They already did last year.
I don't really get the outrage, "Soulless corporation does soulless thing". Colour me shocked.
They spent millions on this and did something like 27,000 prompts just to get this. It would have hasne cheaper and easier to just hire an animation team
The end result would have been better as well.
It matters a little more I think, because Coke’s aesthetic is a part of “Americana” - people collect vintage Coke advertising. (And it’s a broad enough hobby to have niches; I had a professor that was specifically focused on how African Americans have been depicted in Coke ads in his collecting)
If you put any stock into what capitalism promises - Coke ads are supposed to be the best of the best. Coke doesn’t need to advertise to inform you that Coke exists. Coke holiday ads are supposed to be a spectacle, to encourage you to associate things like Christmas itself with the soda. Their advertising has changed how Americans picture Santa even. There were good artists who got paid, and you got advertising that was more to be trying to make you feel positive feelings/some appreciation of the aesthetics.
It’s just another symptom of late stage capitalism - that the interaction between the business and the customer must be hostile. They can’t pretend that their advertising is meant to be for our benefit. Like yeah, obviously as cynic lemmings we know advertisers are always full of shit, but I think for most normies the Coke ads have always been at least mildly interesting part of seeing a movie during the Christmas season.
There are a couple of placeholder ads put on billboards by the billboard company where I live, and one of them literally says "can't block this ad, huh?" The hostiliy has become palpable.
and yet here we are, talking about coke.
here it is. this is ragebait. we're talking about coke. we've lost The Game by thinking about it.
Can you please make a version of this where the pictures on the right are higher resolution? Perhaps 2x?
Coca cola fucking sucks. Drink water, unless you're afraid of giving up the shit with which we were raised
Well... Club Mate makes a damn good cola. Probably because it's much less sweet...
A sloth and panda also make an appearance, animals that are commonly seen in winter environments.
Trucks 3, 8, and 10 are all the same... whaddo I win?
We know you’re human… for now
And the ad did exactly what it was intended to do. Getting everyone to talk about it. Any attention, is good attention, when their advertising is literally there to remind you that they exist.
Hmm, yes, because the world is definitely in danger of forgetting about the obscure brand -- checks notes -- "Coca Cola."
To be honest, I don't know anyone who drinks that boomer juice on a regular basis.
