The Uncomfortable Truth About AI in Advertising

By Ruben Goots – Co Founder and CEO, HAMLET

The international controversy surrounding McDonald’s AI driven Christmas campaign has once again reignited a fundamental debate about artificial intelligence in advertising. After fierce criticism, the spot was taken offline, and McDonald’s together with its agency TBWA Neboko Amsterdam quickly reframed the narrative, stating that “it wasn’t about AI, but about the message.” That framing is too simplistic.

What this case primarily exposes is how essential emotion and authenticity are in advertising, and how quickly perception can shift when new technology disrupts that balance. In advertising, message and execution are inseparable. How a story is told determines how it is received. For that very reason, technology, when it becomes too prominent, can create distance where closeness and recognition were intended.

The reactions were therefore not only about technology, but about experience. About alienation, about a lack of warmth, about an emotional distance that is difficult to explain rationally but is immediately felt. Brands do not operate in a technological framework, but in a cultural reality where credibility and authenticity are constantly tested.

How audiences accept technology is closely linked to what that technology represents. In the case of generative AI, for many consumers the issue is not only the end result, but also what it replaces. The perception that human labour and creative craftsmanship are being substituted by technology triggers resistance, especially when it concerns large, well known brands. Not because progress is rejected, but because such choices are quickly interpreted as detachment and distance.

This sensitivity is reinforced by the way AI is currently presented and sold. Technology is positioned as faster, cheaper and easier, while far less attention is given to what AI can and, above all, still cannot do. Its limitations, quality risks and the ongoing need for human oversight are often under communicated. This asymmetry creates expectations that are difficult to meet.

Added to this is the persistent myth that AI is a kind of black box: a prompt goes in, a commercial comes out. Anyone actually working with these tools today knows that reality is far more complex. AI driven productions require hybrid workflows, many iterations, intensive direction and constant alignment. The complexity does not disappear, it shifts.

The McDonald’s case itself illustrates this clearly. As later explained by the executive producer, a team of ten people worked day and night, full time, for five weeks on the film. Yet that reality is overshadowed by a simpler narrative in which technology is primarily framed as a replacement.

Within larger agency holdings, an additional dynamic is at play. AI applications are increasingly developed and deployed internally, while external production steps are quickly labelled as “expensive” or “inefficient.” From an internal economic perspective this is understandable, but it carries the risk that technological choices are tested less against what is creatively and qualitatively the right output for the brand and the audience.

Generative AI is undoubtedly useful today for specific applications such as visual development, previs, concept testing, duplications and certain VFX layers. But once it is presented as a total solution, the debate shifts. Not only at the level of execution, but at the level of trust. Consumers instinctively make a moral assessment: what does this choice say about how a brand views people, creativity and craftsmanship?

AI does not automatically reduce the need for craftsmanship. On the contrary. The more powerful the tool, the greater the responsibility for direction, judgment and decision making. Technology can do a lot, but it does not make aesthetic or ethical choices. Those remain human responsibilities.

Strikingly, the ecological aspect has almost completely disappeared from this discussion. In recent years, the industry has rightly focused heavily on sustainability and environmentally responsible production. The large scale use of AI, with its significant energy and water consumption, sits uneasily with those ambitions. The fact that this impact is barely considered in the debate today, despite being very real, creates friction and reinforces a sense of inconsistency.

When AI campaigns are approached primarily for their novelty value rather than for execution, audience perception and authenticity, the bar begins to shift. Being critical, therefore, does not mean being resistant to technology, but acknowledging that not every application will be automatically accepted.

In that light, it is telling that the very companies behind these technologies often opt for classical, human storytelling in their own brand communication. Apparently, there too, there is an understanding that trust and credibility do not emerge from technology alone.

The discussion around McDonald’s does not show that AI fails, but rather that the debate around it is too often conducted in technical and economic terms, and too rarely from the perspective of perception and impact. Yet the real benchmark lies elsewhere: with the consumer.

Ultimately, this debate is not about AI, but about the relationship between brands and their audience. About the connection, trust and recognition that are built over time, and about how quickly they can come under pressure when the pursuit of speed and simplification outweighs authenticity and humanity.

Ruben Goots is Co Founder and CEO, HAMLET

  Advertising, AI, HAMLET, Opinion Piece, Ruben Goots, Thought Leadership