McDonald’s Netherlands pulled its Christmas commercial last week after facing a wave of criticism.
The spot, titled “It’s the Most Terrible Time of the Year”, was built around AI-generated imagery: chaotic, distorted scenes of burnt dinners, collapsing decorations and shoppers fighting over toys, all set to a twisted version of the Andy Williams classic.
Within days, viewers were calling it “creepy”, “depressing” and “AI slop”. McDonald’s removed the video from YouTube and said the campaign had “failed to resonate” with Dutch customers.
Uncanny and Empty
The ad’s visuals fell squarely in the uncanny valley. Faces and hands looked off, movements were jittery, expressions did not quite match the emotions they were supposed to convey.
Yet the backlash went beyond technical flaws. People reacted to a feeling that a global brand had tried to shortcut the work of real animators, actors and set designers with a tool that felt cheap and emotionally empty.
Instead of sharing warmth, the advert framed Christmas as a miserable obstacle course, then invited viewers to escape into a fast-food restaurant. The combination was hard to swallow.
Christmas advertising in Europe has long traded on sincerity, nostalgia and a certain gentle humour. Viewers tolerate sentimentality because the craft behind it is visible: recognisable faces, hand-built sets, a sense that people took time to make something special.
Here, the opposite seemed true. Users online accused McDonald’s of outsourcing feeling itself to an algorithm, then using that to sell more burgers.
Humans Curating, Not Creating
Behind the scenes, the production was not fully automated. The agency TBWA\NEBOKO and production company Sweetshop later stressed that humans still curated thousands of AI-generated shots, edited them and structured the story.
That only underlines the paradox. AI did not replace human labour; it replaced the visible hand of a human artist. The result looked as if no one had truly owned it, aesthetically or ethically.
Across Europe, there is growing unease about this direction. Unions representing actors, illustrators and musicians warn that generative AI can be trained on their work without consent, then used to undercut them.
Regulators in Brussels are still refining the AI Act, which will require transparency for synthetic content in political messaging, but commercial culture remains largely self-policed.
Audiences Draw a Line
The McDonald’s advert has become a small case study in what audiences will accept. Viewers did not reject technology outright. Many already watch films with heavy CGI and listen to music refined by software.
The problem came from a brand appearing to use AI not to enhance human craft but to avoid it, and from a message that dismissed family life as something to endure rather than enjoy.
There is also a generational shift at play. Younger Europeans are surrounded by content that looks synthetic, from filters to video-game aesthetics. For some, the discomfort comes less from the visuals than from what they signal about the future: a cultural landscape where low-cost, endlessly generated images drown out work made slowly by identifiable people.
Lessons for Brands
Brands will continue to experiment with generative tools. Some will do so discreetly, as part of post-production. Others will advertise the technology itself as a sign of modernity.
The lesson from the Dutch backlash is clear. Audiences still expect advertising, especially around celebrations, to feel recognisably human. They may accept a few digital imperfections, but they will not easily forgive campaigns that seem to laugh at real life whilst cutting human creators out of the frame.
McDonald’s Netherlands wanted to show that it understood holiday stress. Instead, it reminded viewers precisely why they remain wary of machines pretending to understand them at all.
Keep up with Daily Euro Times for more updates.
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