One year ago, Silverside AI launched the first all-AI advertising for Coca-Cola’s global holiday campaign “The Holidays Are Coming”. It was the world’s first true global AI advertising campaign. It quickly became the most watched piece of AI creative in history (yes, we’re bragging a little). It also became the most controversial AI ad in history. Has creativity as we know it ended? Has Christmas been ruined? By one little ad – who knew. Well, all was for nought. “The Holidays Are Coming” turned out to be one of Coke’s highest-performing ads among consumers – in history, that is.
And yes, we made it with a handful of wildly smart people working long, long hours with the newest AI tools (for back then) – for nearly 80% less than it usually costs to make a television ad, and in about 80% less time.
This year – the second in a row – we got to do it all over again: partner with Coca-Cola and develop their newest global “Holidays Are Coming” spot. Better, faster, crisper, more realistic than the original – using technologies and techniques that make last year’s holiday ad look like a VHS tape. We got smarter – a lot smarter – about AI and creativity. Coca-Cola got smarter too – about AI and how to use it across their complex marketing systems.
Well, guess what a lot of brands did during that year around AI? Not a lot. Maybe they formed a task force, did some deep reflection about legal scenarios and data privacy, or considered AI indemnification ladders.
When we founded Silverside AI two years ago – an AI marketing innovation lab built to help global brands radically transform their marketing ecosystems – we expected curiosity. We expected hesitation.
The ultimate “Innovator’s Dilemma”? A nod to the late, great Clayton Christensen, esteemed Harvard Business School professor of innovation – in which the best-intentioned companies miss the bigger transformations because they just don’t know how to organize and move forward. I’d say so.
But by early summer, something changed. We started to see a big shift unfold inside some of the world’s biggest brands when it comes to AI. Headline: the acceleration of AI adoption and scaling is happening – among the brands willing to get moving, run quick experiments, and leverage their learnings into scaled AI models.
Some of the most forward-leaning brands stepped beyond cautious pilots and into real creative and operational bets – bets that compressed timelines, reinvented workflows, and opened the door to types of storytelling that simply weren’t possible before.
Take SVEDKA Vodka. They approached Silverside AI with an exciting challenge: could we bring back their iconic SVEDKA robots – retired in the 1990s – but do it with AI? Keep the spirit, but make it cooler – way cooler – more fun, and yes, do it faster than any ad has been produced. To succeed, we had to modernize their look, maintain character consistency across dozens of variations, and produce entirely new creative spots in just weeks. Using new AI production pipelines, we rebuilt the SVEDKA robots, reintroduced them to the world, and watched as consumers embraced the campaign with enthusiasm. People didn’t just tolerate AI – they loved the freshness it brought to a brand they already knew. Yeah, that’s right – it scored really well.
At almost the same time – this past summer – Panasonic Appliances in China asked us to launch an all-AI campaign for their new Porsche-designed washing machine. The brief was wild, and the timeline even wilder: a complete campaign – concept, visuals, music, narrative, and cultural framing – all in a few weeks, entirely with AI. We created custom training models that reproduced the machine’s engineering details with absolute fidelity while presenting a futuristic but culturally grounded vision of China in the not-so-distant future. When the campaign launched, it was picked up by nearly every major news outlet in the country as a breakthrough moment. The reward for creative risk was unmistakable.
Amazon Small Business also stepped into full-AI experimentation this summer, exploring how to generate customized campaigns for the diverse industries they serve globally. Their goal wasn’t just efficiency – it was learning how to personalize advertising at a scale no traditional production model could support.
And then there was Coke. Well, we told you that story – yes, a big global gamble two years in a row – and a big payoff! But it’s still unbelievable to think about the brands now moving fast – from experimentation, to proofs of concept, and now to scaling. They’re starting to really see the potential of AI systems. And did I mention Coke created the most watched AI content in history? Even more than ChatGPT. The Coke ad will be seen by 1 billion+ people around the world. ChatGPT? Well, only around 800 million. There we go bragging again. But we are proud of the work we’ve done with Coke – and the risks we’ve taken.
Across every one of these projects, the pattern is unmistakable: the brands that experiment first build the deepest understanding, move the fastest, learn the most – and are now positioned to scale AI across their marketing ecosystems. Say farewell to task forces, committees, and lawyers leading your AI initiative. The time is now – not next week or the week after that. The $1 trillion global advertising industry is going to be transformed from top to bottom by AI. Where will you be in that transformation – at the top or the bottom of it?
2024 was the year of curiosity.
2025 became the year of experimentation.
2026 will be the year where scale turns into competitive advantage.
The gap between the early adventurers and everyone else is widening – and it’s widening fast.
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