MC Donald's Christmas campaign - why do you need to hire back people with an art background?

by: Artur Dziedziczak

December 11, 2025

MC Donnalds - is everything alright there?

What was the weirdest thing you saw this week? Was it another brain rot from TikTok? Or maybe you managed to try "bitterballen" for the first time?

Well, marketing people from all around the world saw the newest MC Donalds Christmas campaign and let me tell you. It was wild. [1]

Weird AI Slop

I watched the whole video [2] and I can tell you. It’s bad. Really bad.

fireplace

Firstly, you can see that people who worked on it are not that detached from Dutch culture. Bicycles, canals and, in general, people look Dutch there. Blond hair, strong jaw line, occasional person of color but not too many of them, so they still stay higher class.

You know Dutch.

But let’s dive deeper into the cringe fest prepared by MC Donalds' team.

  • First of all, there is no composition. Everything seems to be cut and pasted without any order till the last scene, which unites writing into MC Donald’s building.
  • Lighting is OK, but it looks like it’s only because someone decided to later put a filter on it which would dim the unevenly generated parts.
  • People’s hands morph crazy, especially when there are more than 4 people on the screen.
  • Some shots do not make any sense. A couple is sitting inside the building with fog on the glass which blurs everything else but not them. It looks like they sit outside because of this "artistic filter".
  • Branding is off. The logo of MC Donalds on their products is simply wrong. The fonts of their branding do not match the generated ones. Some of the products don’t have branding at all. For example, the burgers they eat.
  • Objects move through each other. For example, a car hits a bike which is later" re"re-generated".

But all of those are not the worst thing about it.

Detachment from reality is.

MC Donald’s Christmas campaign was a management failure.

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"Yoooo! Johny, I have this idea for a campaign, fully AI. I have seen some LinkedIn posts and TikToks where people generate stupid videos with hidden anger, and it clicks like CRAAAZY. WE NEED ONE. I already have this video of a cat breaking the Christmas tree. CHECK IT OUT HEHEHEHEHE"

I’m not saying this happened. But I also worked in marketing agencies and sometimes the ideas come to live in really similar fashion.

Usually, no matter what your management comes up with, it’s reviewed by designers and people who check if it has strong branding. But due to AI slop machines these people are no longer there. Most of them were fired or replaced by juniors who never had the opportunity to work in such toxic environment as modern design culture.

And you need to have artists in your company because, as a manager, YOU ARE DETACHED FROM REALITY. You "feel" your brand and they "understand" it. Those are two different things. Your management can be based on vibes and people will still deliver, but the quality of work is determined by "understanding", not the "vibes".

AI Bubble - how many videos were generated?

bbb

It all makes you wonder. How many of these videos were created? 100? Maybe 1000? I don’t think more because MC Donalds went cheap in this campaign. Still, from all the videos, they picked the ones which have a lot of motion, anger and strong emotions.

The quality of all of them is unhinged. It all looks scary. Not realistic at all. On every video which was used, something is missing. There is no connection to the real world. It’s like a video game with poor quality assets.

It can be better

  1. Hire designers with experience to review whatever you brainfart in your managers brain
  2. Use AI as a tool which enhances your work. Not replace it. Think about KPN cat which smiles but everything around it is actual footage. I know you would need money for that but otherwise, your work looks like a tik tok generated by a drunk uncle in a pub.
  3. If your whole product is toxic, send a positive message. Who the hell thought it’d be good to put MC Donalds' brand, which is EVIL as hell, between videos which reassemble anger and pain? Just don’t spread evil in your ads.

Conclusion

AI replacement of designers will happen and more and more work will be done by AI. Sadly, if no one with experience reviews it, future campaigns will get backlashed.

So maybe hire a senior designer and stop telling them how to use their tools.

Ohhh and last thing. In Burger King, you can order vegan meat for every burger from menu.

Sources

[1] “McDonald’s pulls ’creepy’ AI-generated Christmas ad after viewer backlash.” [Online]. Available: https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/mcdonalds-pulls-creepy-ai-generated-christmas-ad-after-viewer-backlash.

[2] “They’re So Delusional It’s Painful.” [Online]. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COtZc4S4rdY.