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…
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.
That’s classic.
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”
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.
Honestly not so sure. Cooking at home is cheaper and more accessible than ever with all the recipes available free of charge. Not to mention the global economic slump with aging and (hopefully) declining populations, less people are in a hurry to get to work.
McDonalds was able to get to where it was by offering fast and cheap food because it was more efficient, but that might not last forever. It’s only 1 profit minmaxing douchebag away from ruining its reputation with one bad price raise, and trust is easier to gain the first time.
Their reputation is already in the shitter for helping the Trump campaign team get him reelected.
One is left wondering why they even advertise.
For coke I imagine it’s the desire to remain continuously culturally relevant so it remains - the - fizzy sugar water in everyone’s minds. (How effective that actually is I have no idea and I suspect, neither do they).
McDs meanwhile has lost revenue (in part attributed to their price hikes amongst other factors ) and is probably hoping to drive up sales.
Now I’m wondering if their meat is real. Time for me to switch to “Amburgers and Woot Beer” (A&W).
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.
Bad press for AI is good even if McDonald’s gets some sort boost from the controversy (I don’t think they will).
They did get a boost. No one’s gonna boycott McDonald’s for this, but the publicity and brand awareness they got from it is HUGE.
And this might actually boost AI too. Some people DID like the ad, so AI ad companies might just double down on making AI ads better, invest more money into r&d etc. Because if huge companies like McDonald’s and coke are buying AI ads, there’s definitely a market there.
I am familiar with the “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” adage, and you are definitely right that more people are having McDonald’s on the mind than if this fiasco hadn’t happened. That said, I don’t think McDonald’s can increase their brand awareness until life is discovered on other planets.
Well, if it ain’t the ol’ Reverse Barbara Streisand Effect Method…
A hallmark of this era. Why please those you serve when you can instead infuriate them with a fraction of the effort and still turn a profit?
Sadly you’re right. Bad publicity is still publicity
This does not make me want mcd’s.
yeah this doesn’t effect me at all. there are enough other reasons not to buy it
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it’s shit now
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it’s expensive now
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service sucks now
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it’s american
It’s shit NOW? it’s always been shit.
nah like eight years ago a jr chicken was tasty and a decent price. good value.
Just because it tasted good to you doesn’t mean it was actually good food. Most parmesan cheese in the US is largely wood pulp. Yum right?
I didn’t say it was good, and definitely didn’t say that it was healthy or quality. only that it was good value, and obviously in the context of fast food which is inherently neither healthy nor quality and so that does not need to be stated
What is a good value for a 5 gallon bucket of shit? Value is a grade of price AND quality.
Most pre grated shelf stable Parmesan cheese is cellulose.
We do get real cheese here.
Right, the “Shakey cheese” as my kid calls it.
Shit, there are at least 3 mcds within a few miles from my house, and I manage to just not eat there.
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Maccas getting their grubby fingers in the rage economy 😒
Rage economy :(
Angry Meal™️
I still haven’t, nor the coke one.
You’re in a thread about McDonalds, so they get the benefit of you seeing the ad without paying for the extra impression.
I’m surprised they aren’t selling Walmarts radioactive shrimp
Even if wasn’t AI it was still a shitty ad for expensive, mediocre food.
That’s what I find crazy. People used to eat there all the time because it was so cheap. These days you’ll be lucky to find anything under $5 and most combos cost upwards of $15+. All my coworkers used to stop there for lunch between job sites but now they all just bring shit from home. If you are still eating there at this point my guess is you just like mediocre food. If beef prices weren’t so messed up right now I’d say it’d be cheaper just to make it at home.
If you want cheap food, Costco food court is where it’s at. 15 bucks (if that) for a large meal, a drink, and some kind of dessert.
some kind of dessert.
stop the hard sell buddy.
Jeez, you eat ten $1.50 hotdog and soda combos in one sitting?!
Lol.
Their other food is more expensive but it’s still quite cheap.
One day, when I’m feeling particularly rich, I might try a chicken bake or even a turkey sandwich. But as it stands, the $1.50 hotdog is the only thing there I consider relevant.
(Okay, okay… I begrudgingly buy pizza slices for my fancy-pants family members who turn their noses up at Costco’s awesome hotdogs. But still…!)
too bad they got rid of the combo pizza.
And the polish sausage, and the sauerkraut topping for the hot dog.
You have to be a member though. Ask me how I know :p
Not for the food court.
My local one requires ordering by kiosk, which requires swiping your membership card to start the order. Yes, you can probably ask the person next to you to swipe for you.
It must vary by location because my local one has all these signs saying Beginning <date in the past> you must be a costco member to eat at the food court.
Yeah but where are you going to PARK? I don’t know about you, but the Costco in my city is a NIGHTMARE to visit.
Probably get lunch and dinner for $15 at Costco Food Court. You would have more of an issue finding a place to sit and eat.
most people there are likely spending alot more shopping, the food court is just marketing, and it works.
they shrinkflationed thier food, and they never went back.
iirc from their last financials hearings, revenue from lower class orders have dropped significantly, however thr median buyer group has started to spend more to offset those losses. mcdonalds I think had 2% growth suprisingly while the rest of the industry floundered.
basically it’s people who wont pick a better place to get food proping mcdonalds
There’s a lot of stupid people in the world. When I can get a more filling meal at a sit down local restaurant for the same price, why would I go anywhere near McDonald’s? Because people are stupid. And we can all picture people who frequent McDonald’s, they’re the same people you picture when picturing punisher logos and 2a imagery.
If beef prices weren’t so messed up right now I’d say it’d be cheaper just to make it at home.
It IS cheaper to make at home, and always has been. Even during the time McDonald’s was still affordable it was still more expensive than cooking it yourself
I read that the upper/middle class has started going to fast food more because they can’t afford the lunches/dinners they used to get.
Yeah their sales are being buoyed by six-figure income folks, who now see it as a value to eat there.
If you use the app, you can get a large Ice Tea and a Large Fries for $2.20 including tax. That’s all I ever get there, once a month or so. They gotta be losing money on that deal. I’m slowly putting them out of business. You’re welcome.
Those apps make money off of your data, not their food.
Prices are high everywhere, so while it’s way more expensive than it was, McDonald’s is still pretty much the cheapest option.
A large value meal costs ~$9, and there is a 20% discount for using the app at $15, so if 2 people go or you bring some home it’s ~$7. Every $60 you spend nets you free happy meal too.
Meanwhile a local place charges $20 for a burger and fries, no drink, before tip. The grocery store is up to $8.99 a pound for hamburger meat, so while it is still cheaper to make it yourself, by the time you include cooking ingredients it’s pretty comparable.
The grocery store is up to $8.99 a pound for hamburger meat
And given that Bigmac patties have been reduced to 45 grams that single pound of meat is enough for 10
And the salt used to flavor them is still so cheap it’s essentially negligible.
Yeah I heard a guy use McDonald’s in an illustration the other day, how people see the golden arches and everyone recognizes it, knows what to expect. The same food all over the country, similar food around the world. And it’s fast and cheap.
And I’m like… Right… Maybe once upon a time…
The first two paragraphs of the article confirm it’s AI generated. The only one denying it is the ad agency.
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.
I think the last time i saw a tv ad was 10+ years ago. Except for the one time i pirated some trash tv show and they forgot to cut out the ads. Because it was american it was extra dystopian. I don’t know how people do it. Do you get used to that or am i just turbo autistic
It’s a little of column a & column b. Until recently I was paying for entertainment services, then they started including ads in premium memberships (except dropout, you’re a real one Sam!). I went, as you so eloquently stated, turbo autistic. And cancelled everything (again except dropout) and locked my virtual presence down. I’m talking vpns,a pi hole, modded apks, the fucking works aside from a complete degoogling which is next in the list. That was a year or two ago, and I honestly must’ve had something like digital Stockholm syndrome cause it really doesn’t feel all that different cause I would typically zone out during commercial breaks anyways. But I had my mom in town visiting and she wanted to watch wicked and it was pretty jarring having to sit through 2-3 minutes of ads to watch the movie.
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
Holy shit that whole thing was off-putting even without considering where it came from.
The ad was a weird take. I think it’s a mixture of the message and the uncanny Ai. Even if the ad wasn’t Ai, it’d be a really odd ad.
Yeah, pretty much all of that hit my uncanny valley instincts. It was definitely, significantly edited after generation, but the clips themselves were…not right.
There’s definitely some AI in it, and it’s definitely shit.
Some AI? It’s all AI!
Pass
Most definitely AI.
Seems I suck at spotting ai in this clip. The cat one looked off and maybe the dude hanging down from the fairy lights but honestly I would have assumed it was all filmed or animated for the cookies.
This is a wild place. Share you experience and get more downvotes than upvotes. Not that votes matter it’s just an odd thing to do. Sorry I can’t see things like y’all.
AI makes all animals more fluffy and cutesy than they are in real life. My mom keeps trying to show me “real” videos that are funny or cute and it just makes me want to put her in a home. She’s also a shit human outside of that, so don’t judge me for wanting to put her in a home for not recognizing AI.
Those tips will help me in the future. I would like to say I’m not an idiot and maybe it’s how I see things vs others. Something I find interesting anyway, like I can’t visualise anything in my minds eye and find it shocking people can picture say a red apple.
I did judge you for you mum comment, but if she’s a horrible person perhaps make some distance between you two if possible. I’ve come to realise most my family have horrible views and it sucks.
It does suck. Realizing that as a child she indoctrinated me to the right wing. Manipulated me into seeing the world as she does. It took me far longer than I’d care to admit to see what happened and realize that those ideas are sick and horrifying. And now seeing how she’s so easily tricked by AI, it starts to make sense. She’s just stupid and easily tricked into believing falsehoods.
As someone with a shitty past but I would say shittier due to parents being shit rather than hostile like yours seem.
I’m come to accept that my parents made mistake and as the eldest those mistakes have shaped who I am, the good and the awful lot of bad. And I realise that they did the best they could as they came from shitty backgrounds too and didn’t have the ability to break the cycle. I decided not to have kids as I am breaking that cycle.
I guess I’m saying perhaps you mom went through a similar background and although it doesn’t excuse it, it explains it more for your peace of mind than hers though.
Edit: for context. I saw my dad beat my mum for years. When that stopped I saw my mum beat my dad and worse bully him. Other things like she had me kick down doors looking for my dad and generally was a warzone we grew up in.
That sounds familiar. After coming to some realizations on my own, I now know my dad had ADHD like me and my son, as did my grandpa. At that time ADHD wasn’t really understood so I could understand how a relationship within that context would be difficult. My own relationships have struggled for the same reasons because despite my elementary teachers suggesting I get tested, she refused. 40 years of not knowing what was wrong with me, fucked me up bad, all because she’d be embarrassed of having the kid with a disorder. My mother, however doesn’t have the excuse of mental health, she’s just flat out evil. Everything that ever went wrong was someone else’s fault, usually mine, because I was there. Nobody else was, because she didn’t have any close friends, for a reason.
I love my son more than anything, and it hurts knowing what’s in store for his future but at least he’s got some help in understanding his condition, and meds and therapy for it. But the future is only going to get worse. And that potentially civilization ending sun spot is the best I can hope for, to at least level the playing field for him. Otherwise his future is just unbridled capitalism and fascism. It hurts like a MFer to know that.
Edit: that last part is basically saying “you’re lucky you don’t have kids, they’re great, but it hurts”
The tree exploded weird, the mixer was vibrating weird, the guy falling on the ice flopped weird, I could go on. It was weird after weird clips stacked on each other
This is the thing though, some people just don’t see that shit. Every single clip looked so unnatural and AI slop to me, real Black Hole Sun vibes, but some people are literally not seeing the dogshit jank we see. I suspect this explains some of why corpos think it’s amazing if they can’t see the abhorrence.
I watched it twice and I couldn’t really tell. It’s switching between scenes so fast I can’t really focus on any part. I am on a phone too, so it’s small.
Switching really quickly is one sign that it’s AI content because it’s still really bad at keeping context. AI is good enough at generating a scene where “a certain thing happens,” but really can’t create a scene where “a certain thing happens and as a result this happens.” It can’t tell a story.
That’s crazy to me. I’m on a phone too, and it’s… Just garbage content.
Technologically speaking it’s amazing! Very close to real. If it was on in the background at a bar or something I probably wouldn’t clock it.
But watching it? With my eyes? Immediately obvious.
I wonder why some people can’t see it? Do you notice other AI stuff? Like even a lot of animated pictures and memes are AI now, as I scroll by I’m like yep, there’s more. And I’m sure I’m not seeing it all, and I’m getting fooled by some of it, but all the time I’m seeing it.
Do you have a technical background? An artistic one?
I just like tech, never been one for art.
20 years ago people would have shit themselves seeing this and hearing that it was all created entirely by computers. But the reality is in the implications. Sure that’s kinda/sorta impressive that AI can do that much now, but the implications that some can’t tell the difference anymore is absolutely horrifying. Trump can post a video of him urinating on a 40’ tall pile of brown corpses and some will see it as AI slop, and some will take it as real, and cheer it on. The implication is that people can now do and say horrible things and claim that the evidence is AI, or the reverse, that people can make it look like someone did something horrible and people will believe it. Give it another 5-10 years and it’ll be even harder to tell. This shit is society-ending levels of bad.
The ad was just as synthetic as their food. Glad they pulled it though, it was really off to watch…
That is an unusually adept use of symbolism for a brand
“This wasn’t an AI trick,” she said. “It was a film.”
Nah. It really was an AI trick.
Not a trick, actually. The trick was poisoning the water of some community, and making their utilities go up for this bullshit.
Use generative ai on your brand once and you will never get rid of the stink.
Short memories
For some anyway.
Seven weeks just for slop that didn’t convert a single customer.
