In December 2025, McDonald’s Netherlands tried something bold.

Their Christmas campaign didn’t lean into warmth or nostalgia. Instead, they pushed out an AI-generated advert that painted the holidays as “the most terrible time of the year.” Glitchy faces, distorted dinners, an avalanche of snow swallowing a cyclist, all set to a twisted version of Andy Williams’ classic festive song.

Within a week, the ad was gone.

Critics called it soulless, cynical, and deeply out of touch. McDonald’s quickly pulled the spot, and their creative agency issued a statement defending the work. They’d spent seven weeks building it with AI specialists, yet the result left people cold.

Coca-Cola, a brand practically synonymous with Christmas advertising, doubled down on AI for the second year in a row. Instead of magic, they delivered anthropomorphic animals gawking at trucks in ads that many viewers found unsettling. Once again, the backlash was swift. People weren’t just indifferent. They were angry. Nostalgia had been replaced by something uncanny, a simulated version of meaning that failed to connect.

Both campaigns sparked the same debate: when brands replace human creativity with machine efficiency, what’s lost in the process?

The Missing Link: Emotion

You can’t fake real emotion.

Viewers instinctively pick up when something’s off, an eye that doesn’t quite blink right, a smile that feels painted on. Even the best AI tools today still haven’t cracked the code of human connection. And connection is what moves people.

That’s why brands that rely on AI to tell their most emotional stories are running a dangerous experiment. These aren’t just errors in lighting or framing. They are breakdowns in trust, in believability, in shared experience. You don’t watch these ads and feel something. You watch them and wonder who thought this was a good idea.

Why Real Faces Still Matter

People want to see people. It’s how we interpret emotion, understand nuance, and remember stories. Psychologists have long known that the brain responds more strongly to real human faces than to anything synthetic. It’s how we assess authenticity. It’s how we build trust.

That’s the mistake these brands made. They forgot that advertising isn’t just about being seen, it’s about being felt.

The Illusion of Innovation

It’s tempting to chase the new. AI promises speed, savings, and scale. But sometimes what you save in time, you lose in impact. Because even if the technology looks polished, the story can still fall flat.

AI doesn’t know how it feels to hold a warm drink on a cold day. It’s never missed someone. It’s never laughed until it cried. It can replicate language and structure, but not the soul behind the words. That’s why it struggles when it’s asked to deliver emotion on behalf of the world’s biggest brands.

And make no mistake: audiences can tell the difference.

What This Means for Business

Whether you’re a global brand or an ambitious local company, the lesson is the same: your strongest USP is still your people. That’s what builds trust. That’s what sparks emotion. That’s what makes your story memorable.

Your customers don’t want perfection. They want the truth. They want to see who you are, not just what you do. And when you show up in that way, honestly, consistently, with meaning, you don’t need to be louder. You just need to be real.

At Farsight, we believe the most powerful stories start with humans. Not because we’re traditionalists. But because, no matter how far the technology goes, connection is still what drives conversion.

And that’s something no algorithm can fake.

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Want to create marketing that connects on a human level?
Let’s talk about how to tell your story with meaning.

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