November 10, 2026·Aesthetic Study
Showing your work
As AI makes ads easier to produce, brands are showing how much work went into making theirs by hand.
For the last two years, Coca-Cola has used AI to remake its 1995 holiday ad, the one with the glowing red trucks. Both times, people hated it.
Everyone else seems to be doing the opposite: making painstaking ads by hand and making sure everyone knows it. Levi's crew spent four hours filming every second of its stop-motion yeti. Prada put "Animated by Hand" right under the title of its holiday film, then made a second film about the animators themselves.
For all the talk of prompts replacing animators, handmade films are having a major moment.
Strathberry, a Scottish handbag brand, opens Badger's film on a sea made of wool, with the waves moved one strand at a time. Across its three short films, the Prague studio So Daze photographed 2,880 frames. The director, Alina Golovlova, said they wanted the films to feel tangible in the era of AI. If someone took their time on the ad, you assume they took their time on the bag.
Prada's mice were drawn in pencil by a team led by John Pomeroy, who worked on The Land Before Time, and Prada released a whole second film about them. Apple posted video of people moving clay Mac minis by hand, down to the little motion lines, to sell a computer it markets on how well it runs AI. Often, the video of someone making the thing gets shared more than the thing itself.
That said, there are parallels. Dior said its film, directed by Sylvain Chomet of The Triplets of Belleville, was illustrated entirely by hand, and it compared the months of drawing to making couture. Within days, viewers were posting frames that seemed to show AI. Chomet eventually responded, denying AI use but admitting they used a small amount of “automated interpolation.”
Coke’s AI videos have since been called “the best ad Pepsi never paid for,” but the company’s head of generative AI says they performed really well (a likely thing for a head of generative AI to say). Those shortcuts might work when you’re banking on nostalgia for a sugary soda, but luxury products require more attention to detail.
Further reading:
- Coca-Cola's AI trucks drive again
- Why Coke says its AI ad passed the test
- Advertisers pick up the pencil again
- How to animate a sea of wool
- The Land Before Time animator who drew for Prada
- Four hours for every second of yeti
- The 1995 Levi's ad with a zip-line and "Boombastic"
- Apple sells an AI computer with clay
- Stop-motion puppets in real e.l.f. makeup
- Tim Burton on puppets in the age of AI
- The Dior ad that might not be hand-drawn
