In late 2024, the Coca-Cola Company released an unsettling, AI-generated remake of its beloved 1995 “Holidays Are Coming” ad, triggering a major outcry. A followup AI ad in November 2025 didn’t fare much better. Coke vowed that it took an army of “AI specialists” a month to make, but netizens were left appalled, accusing the company of relying on cheap “AI slop.”
The widespread distaste for AI has only grown since then, but some companies finally appear to have learned a lesson. After getting berated for using AI for its advertisements, a New Jersey-based snack brand called Chookie opted to do a 180 — and it’s already paying off in a big way.
One of its AI ads was rife with misspellings and terrifying, googly-eyed chocolate bars. Another of them shows an AI-generated figure producing the cookie bars in what appears to be lab. For the most part, the ads were almost completely ignored online, with the stray comment criticizing the use of AI.
Then, the company launched a new marketing stunt surrounding its attempts to launch a fictional airline, dubbed “Chookie Air,” dedicated to delivering its line of cookie bar snacks. (The goal was to bring attention to its new, real-world partnership with delivery service company Gopuff.)
Instead of relying on generative AI, Chookie built handcrafted airplanes out of cardboard and an even a fully-fledged treehouse “HQ,” inhabited by a pair of hand puppet animals. The result was quirky, roughly edited, and unmistakably human.
One clip shared on Instagram shows the hand puppets getting to work to construct a plane. A makeshift camera rig made out of a painter’s pole allowed the staff to make it look like the plane was flying.
“We started noticing consumers weren’t rewarding polish the way brands thought they were,” said Chookie founder Zev Ziegler in a press release. “They were rewarding effort. Humor. Tiny human decisions. When we compared the performance of our handmade work against AI-generated creative, the difference wasn’t subtle.”
According to the company, the ragtag new ad generated around 12 times more new social media followers than its AI-generated campaigns had. That’s despite putting in roughly the same amount of time and investment.
“At some point every startup brand in [Consumer Product Goods] started using the exact same aesthetics to signal authenticity,” Ziegler said. “We thought building a cardboard airline in a treehouse sounded more honest.”
Chookie isn’t the only company that’s realized taking a stand against AI slop in the advertising space could be far more effective. Some firms are adding “no AI” disclaimers to their ads, while others are vowing to never use any AI-generated content.
It’s a major shift highlighting just how unpopular the tech has…
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