Last week, Coca-Cola released its annual “Holidays Are Coming” commercial. The spot is a reimagined version of the 1995 classic, which has long been one of the most iconic holiday ads of all time. This year’s twist? The ad was created entirely with AI, featuring no real humans at all.
From Practical to Pixel
The original 1995 commercial was a massive production effort, built through practical effects, real sets, and an extensive on-set crew. It likely took weeks of coordination (casting, travel, set builds, styling, and post-production) to create that warm, cinematic celebration of community that helped define Coca-Cola’s holiday identity for decades.
Fast forward to today, and the process looks entirely different. After experimenting with AI storytelling in 2024, Coca-Cola fully committed to the approach this year, utilizing tools like Comfy, Flux, Veo3, Runway, Sora, Higgsfield, Pacct, Luma AI, Krea, and KlingAI to generate over 70,000 clips within a month.
It’s an impressive technical feat, and certainly redefines what “production” can look like.
The Shift from Set to Screen
AI doesn’t erase production work; it redistributes it.
Coca-Cola’s 2025 spot relied on over 100 specialists in post-production, where teams sifted through tens of thousands of generated clips to refine lighting, color, and continuity. Every frame required human oversight and decision-making to create a cohesive story.
Even with advanced tools, AI still struggles to capture authentic human emotion, which makes Coca-Cola’s choice to exclude real people interesting. It’s a creative decision that highlights the current boundary between technical achievement and emotional realism.
Why Coca-Cola Made the Leap
For a brand like Coca-Cola, experimenting with AI is as much about strategy as it is about storytelling. The efficiencies are obvious - shorter timelines, smaller physical footprint, reduced costs - but the real value lies in attention.
Coca-Cola has the power to lead cultural conversation, and by going all-AI, they’ve done exactly that. Whether people love it or question it, the ad got the world talking.
Where This Leaves the Industry
Coca-Cola’s move doesn’t mark the end of traditional production; it expands the conversation.
At TRG, we see AI not as a replacement for creativity, but as an extension of it. We use AI daily to enhance workflows, accelerate timelines, and open new creative possibilities — whether it’s visualizing sets, refining edits, or generating concept art.
What Coca-Cola’s experiment shows isn’t that AI is “taking over,” but that the tools are evolving. As they evolve, the human ability to guide, interpret, and connect through storytelling becomes even more essential.
In the end, technology can scale output, but it’s people who give it purpose.
The future of production is here, and we’re already working in it.
At TRG Multimedia, we combine creativity, technology, and experience to push the boundaries of what’s possible in modern production.
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