Daniel Fox

The headlines and LinkedIn posts have been swift and confident. The good people of the Netherlands didn’t like McDonald’s latest film because it was AI-generated. Case closed.

Except that explanation is far too neat, and far too comfortable for the industry.

Blaming AI lets everyone off the hook. It turns a creative failure into a technology problem, and conveniently ignores something advertising has understood for decades: audiences don’t reject production tools. They reject how brands make them feel.

Consumers have happily lived with visual effects, CGI, and digital manipulation for donkeys years. We used to call it “special effects”; in fact, my parents still do. Whatever you call it and whether it’s a Marvel blockbuster or a forgettable Christmas ad, people do not consciously audit production methods. They either feel something, or they don’t. If the presence of artificial techniques alone caused rejection, entire categories of film and advertising would have collapsed years ago. I certainly don’t recall anyone complaining about the Guinness horses.

So no, this isn’t about AI per se.

It’s about tone. And McDonald’s knows its tone.

The problem with the video is that it starts in a place McDonald’s owns: amusing, everyday, slightly charming human moments.

Then, without warning, it lurches into something else entirely. Sublime. Unreal. Occasionally unsettling.

McDonald’s doesn’t need to shock you.

It doesn’t need to unsettle you.

You can see the brand remembering who it is later in the film: warm lighting, golden hues, friendly faces, the safe familiarity of the restaurant. That glow isn’t accidental, it’s decades of behavioural learning and (positive) predictability.

Many have said it’s evidence of Masahiro Mori’s Uncanny Valley principle that “The brain rejects things that are almost human.”  While Mori’s concept is solid, on this occasion, I think it just gives marketers and technophobes a convenient villain.

What consumers really reject is stories that don’t resolve properly and brands that behave out of character. Brands succeed when they reduce uncertainty, not increase it. When something suddenly becomes hard to process in some way, we don’t admire it. We penalise it.

AI is just the tool. Marketing is still the job.

I genuinely hope we don’t lose the art of great cinematography, but using AI to help produce material isn’t inherently bad. What does matter is the creative idea, a believable narrative and attention to detail – the same fundamentals that have separated great advertising from indulgent nonsense since the 1960s.

AI can help you generate shots.

It cannot tell you whether those shots should exist.

That’s still on us.

See the ad here McDonald’s – “It’s the Most Terrible Time of The Year” https://share.google/L9owy1iox9fFPs95z