McDonald’s Netherlands has withdrawn a 45-second holiday advertisement after it was widely mocked for its reliance on generative AI. The spot, produced by TBWA\Neboko, attempted to frame the festive season as the “most terrible time of the year,” but the message was overshadowed by the visual disorientation typical of current AI-generated video. Rapid, disjointed scene changes and uneven continuity made the ad instantly recognizable as machine-produced, echoing many of the criticisms that have followed similar corporate experiments this year.
The video, which featured distorted characters, inconsistent physics, and uneven color grading, quickly became a point of ridicule across social media platforms. Despite gaining only around 20,000 views on YouTube, the backlash in the comments was swift enough to prompt McDonald’s to disable commenting before eventually delisting the ad entirely. Reuploads circulating through marketing databases kept the conversation alive, drawing further attention to how poorly the campaign resonated with audiences already fatigued by AI-driven promotional material.
This isn’t the first time major brands have leaned into generative AI to cut through the crowded holiday advertising space, but reactions remain largely negative. Similar criticism followed Coca-Cola’s 2025 holiday campaign, which viewers described as equally chaotic. McDonald’s Netherlands seemed to encounter the same problem: AI novelty rarely compensates for a lack of narrative coherence, and viewers increasingly expect brands to use the technology more thoughtfully—or not at all.
The production company behind the spot, The Sweetshop, released a lengthy statement defending the process. The CEO emphasized that the team spent seven weeks generating thousands of takes through its in-house AI engine, insisting that the work required as much labor as a traditional production. They framed the final product as a film shaped by human intention rather than a simple AI experiment, even arguing that the extensive editing needed to correct AI hallucinations demonstrated meaningful craftsmanship. It was a stance that did little to shift public sentiment, which largely viewed the ad as an example of how generative tools can undermine, rather than enhance, commercial storytelling.
Watch the clip here.
