Brands reached for AI to speed up their social and ad content, and it cost them. Coca-Cola’s AI Christmas ads and McDonald’s Netherlands’ AI festive spot both got called ‘soulless’ and ‘slop’ instead of earning the engagement they were hoping for. The brands doing better right now, Dove, Aerie, Equinox, are doubling down on real people and real craft instead. The lesson for anyone running social media is a simple one: audiences can feel the difference, and human-crafted content is what actually builds trust.
Everyone rushed to AI… then everyone noticed
When AI first made its debut, brand jumped at the chance to use when powering creativity. Faster, cheaper content and endless variations to test. Sounds sensible, what’s not to like? Well, audiences got good at spotting it… By 2026, Merriam-Webster had named ‘slop’ its word of the year, describing the flood of AI-generated content seeping into everything from slide decks to social feeds (CNN Business) Once people start recognising a look and a rhythm, they call it out.
The shortcut that cuts your audience off
Coca-Cola’s AI-generated Christmas ad returned for a second year running in 2025, and viewers described it as ‘lifeless’ and ‘digital slop’, arguing the AI version had lost the emotional warmth of the brand’s original 1995 advert (Admind). Eagle-eyed viewers even spotted the trucks changing shape mid-ad. When Coca-Cola’s head of generative AI defended the decision by saying the technology ‘genie is out of the bottle’, that line spread almost as fast as the ad itself.
McDonald’s Netherlands had a similar moment. Its AI-made festive advert was pulled entirely after backlash calling it soulless, and the brand disabled comments before quietly removing it, which only drew more attention to the story (Admind). The production team behind it noted that ten people had worked full time on the ad for five weeks. A fair amount of effort, but nowhere near what a traditional shoot with a full cast and crew would need, and viewers felt that absence (KO Insights). Even brands with no deliberate AI campaign aren’t safe from suspicion. In May 2026, someone spotted a line of copy on a Nike product page that read like it had come straight out of a chatbot, and shared it publicly. Fast Company covered the moment, noting that AI is acting as an ‘inauthenticity force multiplier’ for brands that are already vulnerable to being seen as generic (Girls With Impact). One line. That’s all it took to get people questioning whether Nike had lost its voice.
The brands keeping it real
Here’s the more interesting bit. Some brands have made ‘real’ the whole point.
Dove pledged back in 2025 to never replace people with AI in its advertising, a stance that’s aged well given everything above (Girls With Impact). And in early 2026, Aerie, Equinox and Almond Breeze went further, running campaigns that directly called out AI slop and tech gimmicks, positioning themselves as the genuine alternative in a feed full of synthetic content (Adweek). Polaroid has taken this even further, turning ‘human’ into the whole point of its product story. Its 2026 campaign, ‘The Best of Summer Is Analog’, launched a billboard rising out of the sand on Coney Island Beach with a line about jumping in the water before the data centres drink it all up, a dig at how much water AI infrastructure uses, alongside matching sites at London tube stations and locations in South Korea. Creative director Patricia Varella described the stance as provocative but not anti-digital, saying the brand is ‘deeply pro-human’ and knows what it stands to lose if it doesn’t protect that (DCD). It’s a sharp example of a brand not just avoiding AI, but building its entire brand story around choosing real over synthetic. That’s not brands being precious about technology. It’s brands reading their audience and realising trust is worth more than a shortcut. Research backs this up too: a 2025 Nuremberg Institute study found that simply labelling content as AI-generated makes people rate it as less natural and less useful, which knocks down purchase intent before anyone’s even judged the quality of the work (KO Insights).
So what does this mean for your social feed?
The pattern above says the same thing every time. Audiences notice when a brand takes the shortcut, and they punish it. Social media runs on trust built up post by post, comment by comment, and that trust is earned by real people making real decisions about what your brand sounds and looks like.
Craft can’t be automated. A photographer who understands your product, a writer who knows your customers, a team who actually cares whether the caption lands, that’s what separates a brand people trust from a brand people scroll straight past. The examples above didn’t fail because the AI was low quality. They failed because there was no human warmth behind them, and people could feel it.
Keeping it real isn’t the cautious choice anymore. It’s the smart one.
Fancy a chat about keeping your social real?
If you want your social content to feel like an actual human made it, because it should, that’s exactly the sort of conversation we love having over a coffee.
Get in touch with OWB and let’s talk it through.
