Another AI-generated ad – another online backlash. Merry Christmas, McDonald’s.
That’s right, just weeks after Coca-Cola was attacked for doubling down on its use of AI for its latest festive campaign, it’s the turn of McDonald’s Netherlands to feel the heat for daring to dip into the AI pool for its Christmas ad.
“It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year”, was created for the fast food company by TBWA, production company The Sweetshop and an international team of AI filmmakers.
The title is ironic, as the new ad tries to make viewers laugh by featuring various AI-generated people experiencing a variety of festive fails. These include exploding Christmas trees, people falling off roofs while putting up lights and someone burning the festive feast. You can watch it here:
All good festive fun. But not everyone is laughing. In fact, it’s fair to say a lot of people are not happy. The response has been pretty brutal. One commentator said: “Companies are racing to see who can piss off the most people with the lowest amount of effort.”
Another posted: “If they were going for creepy, depressing, deeply unfunny, clumsily shot, poorly edited, and inauthentic – nailed it!” Ouch!
But is it really that bad? And can people tell the difference?
Well, we decided to look at the ad in more detail using our advanced, AI-powered creative testing platform. In a nutshell, our tech measures the effectiveness of ads at scale, predicting the emotional and brand impact of campaigns
But wait, I hear you say – an AI measuring the performance of another AI? What kind of dystopian loop is this? Well, do not fear. Our algorithms are trained on tens of millions of real human responses to ads over the years. So, while the tech might be doing most of the heavy lifting, the insights are very much people-powered.
Anyway, here is what we found:
1.The ad was the 184th most effective Xmas ad this year
The first thing worth noting is that the ad scored below the industry average for overall effectiveness. Using our Creative Effectiveness Score (CES) – a composite metric out of 10 that measures an ad’s ability to generate attention, positive emotion, and correct brand recall – “It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year” managed a score of 5.84.
To put that in context, this sits just under the industry benchmark of 5.88, and means that around half of the ads we’ve ever tested performed better. You can see more below:
Not a great start. In fact, just to put more coal in McDonald’s Christmas stocking, of the 192 Xmas ads we tested, it scored the eighth lowest score for overall effectiveness.
So just why did it score so badly?
2. It scored highly for anger, anxiety and disgust – not exactly the recipe for festive success
You have to give McDonald’s Netherlands credit for trying something different this Christmas. With so many festive campaigns leaning heavily into sugary sentimentality, they opted instead for humour by highlighting everything that can go wrong in the run-up to the holidays.
But it didn’t land – and was not well received.
Looking at the key emotions that people felt, it reads more like the Nightmare Before Christmas than the season of goodwill.
The ad was almost three times more likely to make people feel sad and angry than the average ad. It was also 80% more likely to make people feel anxious and 73% more likely to make viewers feel disgust. In fact, overall viewers were 31% more likely to feel negative emotions than the average ad.
Not exactly Christmassy.
3.But it did make some viewers laugh
The ad’s primary goal was clearly to make people laugh, and on that front it largely succeeded – coming in 17% funnier than the average ad. Although, it was not in the top 50 funniest ads this Christmas.
But humour is a tricky emotion. Some viewers always miss the joke, which is why strong campaigns usually balance it with other positive feelings.
“The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year” didn’t. Instead, it placed all its festive eggs firmly in one basket. It meant, joy and craving were the only other positive emotions that stood out, but both were only slightly above average.
In fact, overall the ad was 1% less likely to generate intense positive emotions than the average ad and way down the list in 93rd when it comes to the most emotionally engaging ads this Christmas.
4. Attention levels were well below the average throughout
With such a strong negative response, attention also took a hit. Attention in the first three seconds came in 15% below the industry average, and although it recovered slightly by the final three seconds, it still remained 9% under the benchmark
5. But viewers at least knew it was a McDonald’s ad
One bright spot in the data is correct brand recall. Because the brand plays a role in the ad’s narrative, 65% of viewers correctly identified McDonald’s as the advertiser – 18% higher than the industry benchmark.
Although with so many negative emotions in play, you have to wonder: is that necessarily a good thing? Surprisingly, some of the predicted next steps are encouraging. Viewers were 10% more likely to feel an intense craving after watching, and with the ad actively prompting them to “hide out in McDonald’s till January”, people were 6% more likely to search for the brand online after watching, while 4% more likely to recommend it. Purchase intent was also slightly higher than average.
6. Feelings of distrust were higher than average
As with a lot of AI-generated ads, levels of distrust were 9% higher than average. People did not quite believe what they were seeing on screen.
Certainly, some have pointed out that some of the images do not look quite right and are even a little creepy. The clip of the cat and the Christmas tree stands out for me as a moment when the visuals don’t quite sit right.