For better or worse, Coca Cola has driven the iconography of Christmas — that jolly bearded fat man in a red suit is a corporate construct. Every year, Coca Cola proudly trots out some new heartwarming ad featuring Santa or a polar bear or whatever knocking back a frosty cold soft drink. Buy coke! They’ve been working hard for almost a century to make sure you associate this holiday with their beverage.
This year they blew it. They’ve aired an AI-generated ad that features trucks and an annoying jingle. Is this to be our new sentimental memory of Christmas?
One of the wealthiest companies in the world decided that they don’t need to pay artists to do their advertising artwork, and would instead have a computer churn over old imagery and cobble together an unappealing hash that won’t win over anyone. Take a look at the comments on that video — people hate it.
Actually, I never understood the association of a cold soft drink with Christmas. Wit hot summer days okay, but December on the Northern Hemisphere? I prefer hot chocolate or Scotch.
If Wikipedia is to be trusted ‘Father Christmas’ was, before the merging with Nicholas of Myra, depicted with a furred robe sometimes red but as in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol of 1843 sometimes illustrated in a green robe. St Nicholas should be banished back to 6th December and Sir Christemas welcomed back in some of his older forms.
I never associated any of them with to Coca Cola.
rietpluim; is port alright?
Port is perfect.
BTW, Saint Nicholas of Myra, whose name day is hugely celebrated in the Netherlands, is slowly loosing terrain to Santa Claus. We tend to adopt US customs at the expense of our own.
Cute animals, pity about the Coke trucks. Anyone who drives a car, hates trucks. How stupid do you have to be, not to know that?
Egg nog. Alcoholic or otherwise.
Here in Oz its often really hot and usually plenty of beer gets drunk too.
rietpluim; My mother was from Dusseldorf and after the war locals were surprised at the way the allies celebrated Christmas. Wie der Karneval! Certainly, Christmas is more American in Britain nowadays.
rietpluim. I forgot to say that my mother was badly frightened when he turned up on 6th December together with his (black) servant ready to beat bad children.
What PZ is accurately pointing at is the slow death of any true creativity.
New Dark Ages (are you getting tired of it or of me mentioning it?)
@submoron – Yes, children were taught that they’d be hit with the ‘roe’ (a bundle of branches) when they were bad, and in the worst case even put in a sack and shipped off to Spain, where St. Nicholas allegedly lives. It was considered pedagogical.
From the first scene, you could tell it was AI produced. The ice on the Coke machine gave it away.
Just a blatant ripoff from the beer company’s turf.