French supermarket's Christmas advert is worldwide hit (without AI) [video]
youtube.com135 points by gbugniot 8 hours ago
135 points by gbugniot 8 hours ago
OP is the original upload, but the agency reposted it with English subs after it got popular outside of France: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLERt5ZkpQ4
You can tell it's great visual storytelling because you don't even need to know the words.
I guess the McDonald's ad didn't need words either, but it was just depressing and awful.
What was the McDonald's ad? Could you drop a link, perhaps?
Here's a guardian link that tells the story and includes the ad: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/dec/11/mcdonalds-r...
I remember a time when using computer was not well seen when creating art.
Wasn't it even Tron who didn't qualify for the special effects oscar because they "used computers"?
It's interesting that it's no longer "computer bad", now it's "AI bad".
I lived through the end of the beginning of computer becoming a primary tool for art, both in building DeviantART and also I was in the second cohort of the first ever digital imaging and technology program in Canada. It was super interesting, during college was the release of the Canon 300D, things moved really quickly after, my graduating year the pro film makers associations introduced a ban on digital work within the associations "club activities" (that lasted about 16 months) - it was funny tho you would see people judging professional salons (contests) zooming in to 30000% looking for signs of digital editing - I was ~20 and it was all very amusing to me, like why did all these old people hate digital art do much? We persisted, bunch of us graduated and started a studio, one day Canon called us, I was one of the first people in the world to use a Canon 5D Mk2 months before it was released, my ads ended up on TV, we won three technical emmy awards, made lots of money, had a great time etc. All the people I know who rode the wave had fantastic careers and worked on interesting stuff, made money etc.(and btw, the last ones standing after all was said and done in the "fuck digital camp"? curmudgeons!)
fwiw: I got out of that industry because it became clear quickly that the technology was going to enable a lot of skilled story tellers to become talented artists, I am a business/technology person who happens to be decent at story telling and naturally not awful at picture making - I would have gotten crushed by what the technologies enabled as the abstractions and programatic features opened up film making to people who didn't want to or couldn't naturally grasp the physics/controls. I'm grateful past me was able to think about this clearly because it lead me to meeting Ben and Moisey and joining them to go on and build DigitalOcean, one of the most amazing experiences of my life.
I think people are setting themselves up for failure if they index their happiness or sense of self satisfaction to their ability to discern what AI-generated content is or not.
Soon, we’ll have no idea what’s AI-generated or not. I care about good, tight story telling.
In the case of this ad.. it’s okay?
Part of watching films and animations was that seeing that a human created this inspired the wish to create in yourself. When all they did was enter a prompt that takes some of the magic away.
If all you care about is just the story then maybe you personally will be satisfied but a lot of people cared about the animations, cinematography, etc, and all of the work that went into that.
I think digital effects still rarely look as good as the peak of Hollywood practical effects (call it… idk, Alien in 1979 through Independence Day in ‘96 or so, roughly, and yes I know ID4 also had computer fx in addition to lots of miniatures and models)
Having to do things for-real also kept things grounded. Modern action movies are often cartoon-like with supposedly human characters stringing together super-human moves that’d leave a real person with dislocated shoulders, broken bones, and brain damage, because they’re actually just CG, no human involved.
[EDIT] OMG, or take Bullitt (1968) versus, say, the later Fast and the Furious sequels (everything past Tokyo Drift). The latter are basically Pixar's Cars with more-realistic textures. They're cartoons with live-action talking segments. Very little actual driving is depicted. Bullitt may have used the movie-magic of editing, but someone did have to actually drive a car, for every shot of a car driving. Or at least they had to set up a car with a dummy to convincingly crash. What you're seeing is heightened, but basically within the realm of reality.
Or take A Bridge Too Far. It's a bit of a mess! Make it CG and it'd be outright bad. But ho-lee-shit do they blow up a lot of stuff, like, you cannot even believe how much. And look at all those tanks and armored vehicles they got! And planes! And extras! Those are all 100% real! AND ALL THE KABOOMS! And it all looks better than CG, to boot. The spectacle of it (plus some solid performances) saves the movie. Make all the FX CG and it'd be crap.
Imagine a Jackie Chan movie with CG stunts. What is even the point. It'd be trash.
> Alien in 1979
I think this might be your nostalgia. The thing looks different in different scenes, and there's a scene that feels like it's a guy inside from the way it moves. So I disagree that Alien is peak special effects. (still peak over things. Peak ambience for sure)
That's very romantic. The golden age of both cinema and animation was an assembly line, often an exploitative one. Most frames were the by product of industrial labor, done by people with little autonomy, low wages, no creative input... the human element was already highly concentrated among a very small elite, and, the majority of the labor pool was treated as mechanical/replaceable input. "seeing that a human created this inspired the wish to create in yourself." Sure, but, it's not reeeaaally “a human did it.” It is more “a small number of visible artists did it.”
Good film making is good film making. I am a creative. I incorporate AI into videos that I make subtly and with a huge amount of care. I know I put more time and care into my craft than most others.
Nobody knows what involved AI and what didn’t. At the end of the day, if you care about your work, it shows.
I can almost see your point, but there are two big problems:
1) To date, there has been no example of AI that is good. It's not even close.
And 2) Why should I be interested in a story nobody was interested in telling? If you don't want to make a video, or tell a story, or write a song, then...just don't. Why even have an AI do it?
what if you write the story yourself, and use AI only to visualize it?
What does a visualization being to the table over a book, if it's executed in the most generic way possible? The decisions made when adapting one medium to another are what does or doesn't make it worthwhile.
Unless your goal is purely to capture people who don't and won't read, as cheaply and cynically as possible.
It's urban myth. Tron was not disqualified because they used computers, it wasn't nominated because it looked terrible.
It seems fundamentally different to put in a ton of work building 3D models, putting together scenes, etc., versus typing a description into a text box and seeing what pops out.
I may be wrong, but I get the sense that computer art was welcomed by people actually working in the field (did professionals criticize the computer graphics in Star Wars or Wrath of Khan?) and it was mostly the lay public that saw it as somehow not real. The opposite seems to be true for AI "art."
> It seems fundamentally different to put in a ton of work building 3D models, putting together scenes, etc., versus typing a description into a text box and seeing what pops out.
People at the time also said using a computer was fundamentally different from putting in a ton of work into building physical models.
A lot of tech adoption is motivated by economics, so the argument that "before it was more work, now it's less work" will almost always apply regardless of the specifics. I don't think it's a useful thing to focus on. It's almost a moral argument: I deserve it because I suffered for it, but he did it easy so he doesn't deserve it.
In fact, I would even go further. I would say it's part of the definition of technology. What is technology? Technology is a thing or an idea, created or discovered, that makes work easier and/or cheaper.
I agree that it's not useful if we're looking at practical stuff. It doesn't matter to me if my table was built with ten hours of human work, or ten seconds.
But for creative work? I think it matters a lot. You used the phrase "creating art." I don't think it counts as "creating" if there's no work going into it. Typing some words into a prompt box and getting a video out is not "creating," any more than doing an image search and printing out an image of a painting is creating a painting.
Printers are extremely useful devices, but they don't create art.
366k views in 4 days hardly qualifies as a worldwide hit. It's decent, but other ads saw more views faster this year, like that American Eagle ad with Sweeney.
It's hard to measure on Youtube due to the weight of paid views but still.
Anyway, it's a cute ad.
I think it mostly blew up via unofficial reposts, since that original version was in French without subtitles.
This one copy on X has 27 million views after 2 days: https://x.com/pawcord/status/1998361498713038874
Ok thanks, this changes things! X exagerates how it counts views but overall I do believe millions saw it.
Intermarche have done some other great Christmas ads on a simialr theme of eating better. Their 2019 ad had a kid realizing that Santa was too rotund to fit down their chimney, so the kid spent the season visiting him at the store and handing him lettuce, homemade vegetable preserves etc. https://youtu.be/DeSG2-FuQhE?si=YvCMY4fR-7K5R8Ke
Great ad, but is it a confirmation that fishes have no soul?
It's a cute ad all but as a French kid I used to see similar things often, we have a good culture of animation. Is "they didn't use AI" really a criteria now?
Advertising that you didn't use AI is definitely a thing now. But this is more likely a jab at the recent McDonalds ad, which did use AI, and which the agency who made the ad vigorously defended the use of AI (hilariously, by bragging about how many hours it took to make that ad).
> vigorously defended the use of AI (hilariously, by bragging about how many hours it took to make that ad).
Likewise with the Coca Cola ad, the agency said in their defense that they had to sift through 70,000 video generations to assemble the few dozen shots in the final ad. And after all that sifting they still couldn't get the one element of continuity (the Coke truck) to look consistent from shot to shot, and had to manually composite over all of the Coke logos since the model kept mangling them.
That’s hilarious. I had cursory familiarity with the McDonald’s situation but did not know thread agency aspect. I’d be very curious how many “hours” were spent minus the inference time.
I feel like there are subcultures that value "long hours and hard work" over "result".
If you can produce great things easily, then it is lazy. But if worked hours and hours including through Christmans, then it is great even if result is crap.
> Is "they didn't use AI" really a criteria now?
Absolutely. Have you been living under a rock? /jk ;-)
Source: Montpellier company: https://www.illogicstudios.com/
Interesting, especially as the city is also host to some of the best gaming developers.
Hehe. People have "AI" fatigue (I'll include myself there, too), not only because AI content "feels" soulless, but also because the looming job displacement narrative, exacerbated by CEOs, VCs, etc. There'll be a big consumer pushback against companies using AI to lay off employees, etc
>There'll be a big consumer pushback against companies using AI to lay off employees, etc
No there won't. Same how there was no consumer pushback when everything from your Nikes to Apple computers moved to be made in China by slave labor and gutted your manufacturing industry at the same time while consumers and shareholders cheered.
Consumers only care about value for money not where or how a product is made. People's morals go out the window when their hard earned paycheque is on the line. Capitalist competition is dehumanizing by nature. The only thing that can help maintain humanity is government regulation because expecting consumers to prioritize morality over price has always failed.
If AI companies give consumers the same product but cheaper, they'll win.
Interesting. I agree with you that consumers prioritize price over morality, but not when their livelihood is directly or indirectly negatively affected by AI, and the people are starting to notice it.
>but not when their livelihood is directly or indirectly negatively affected by AI, and the people are starting to notice it.
And do what about it? People don't give a shit AI is replacing creators jobs same how people didn't give a shit automation or offshoring replaced blue collar jobs. Literally nobody cared when the actors and writers went on strike so nobody will care when they'll be replaced by AI.
Especially when the quality of human made entertainment has been on a steep decline over the last 10 years consumers will even cheer to see them replaced same how they cheered when they could buy higher quality Japanese made cars at lower prices.
I have strong Tawney Scrawny Lion and Un loup dans le potager vibes from this commercial. Delightful.
The little tail wag as he brought his bounty to the table was a nice touch (my fav in fact), and something that AI might have missed.
Very cute, and full of humorous touches. Worth sharing, for a change (when compared to the vast majority of ads).
I remember a french comic called Le loup en slip (literally the wolf in underwear), was it by any chance made by the same artists? Both the style and story have a lot in common.
cute ad. Too bad wolves are hypercarnivores. They won't survive without a heavy-meat diet
Damn, those forest animals really hate their fellow fish!
C'est bon! Charming video.
Very cute and charming ad, the tail wagging at the end was great
The best, imo, is the Corona one
https://youtu.be/AhTM4SA1cCY?si=DVczeTNpaomkB1y0
(That's the extended version for some extra calm).
I do not like the beer, but they nailed what I want for Christmas
As a wolf, I find this advertisement very offensive to carnitarians. Prey animals were clearly made for our use and enjoyment, and the idea of some sort of multi-special gathering, finding a least common denominator in the predation of pescids (simply absurd for a canid), is insulting to our way of life and frankly racist.
Actually, some wolves are mostly pescetarian https://www.dangerrangerbear.com/the-sea-wolf/ ;)
Whoa! 7.5 miles is a long swim. Thanks for the interesting article. Just so you know, that article says “During the salmon and herring spawning seasons, nearly one-quarter of this coastal wolf’s diet is fish” so I don’t think it supports your claim, exactly.
Where did the wolf get all the dairy products needed for all that rich French cuisine? This ad raises more questions than it answers.
and by worldwide hit, do they mean europe and few americans?
its not a bad ad, but nothing about it is worldwide
Ah yes. The christmas ad that has nothing to do with christmas. There's also a fish dish the wolf makes... great attention to detail there.
It is all about Christmas and New Year: cooking good healthy food for the extended family, and new year's resolutions.
The ad illustrates the Christmas spirit and fish is a Christian religious symbol and actually traditional at Christmas in some countries and areas. I don't know if they did it on purpose in this ad or just because it would obviously not have worked for the wolf to bring a meat dish.
I was confused because one of the characters tells the wolf he might have more friends if he didn't go around killing animals all the time. Then the wolf starts making vegetarian dishes, and I thought, okay, they're promoting vegetarianism. Great. But then later the wolf is killing fish, and that's ...okay I guess because they don't talk or walk like the other animals? The speciesism hit hard.
Major pet peeve of mine is when people unironically spread literal advertisements, whether it's because they're "cute" or people are outraged at them or whatever it may be.
The ad is doing it on purpose. It is literally manipulating you and you are spreading the malicious influence to other people. It's not AI but it sure is 'slop'. Propaganda, even.
...slopagada
It's an ad by a grocery store advocating healthy eating and inclusion.
I think people will make reasonable decisions about whether or not to purchase food this winter with or without the "malicious influence" of these ads.
The irony is that Christmas is the time for unhealthy eating but is it still allowed to show in ads?
Personally I interpreted the fish as either a timely Christian symbol (and fish at Christmas is traditional in some places) or simply because a meat dish would not have worked in context.
True the vast majority of the time. This ad though doesn’t promote anything malicious. It’s a cute story with the message “eat healthy stuff like vegetables and fish”, with a brand name/ logo at the very end.
You think the company went "ah forget about profit, we'll spend our money for the good of the people"?
The company is virtue signaling, pandering, and you're falling for it. Jesus Christ.
> The company is virtue signaling
It is true!
And as a (very occasional) customer, I like that this company is signalling that it does not oppose inclusion and doesn't mind questioning "traditional values" (the wolf eating animals).
Many actors these days (both companies and political figures) are very much signalling the contrary, so some kind of signalling is absolutely useful.
Bah! Humbug!
"You know, I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss."
Enjoy your simulated steak.
This time of year, cinemas show Christmas commercials, such as this one, but two or three in a row.
It becomes funny how hard they try to move us. And in the end it's just for a supermarket.
It is possible to have art and artist be separate things; to acknowledge that that reason a thing was created and/or who it was created by can be looked at separately from the thing itself. This commercial was fun to watch. The Budweiser horse commercials are also fun to watch. But enjoying them has very little to do with a choice to support the creator.
The "malicious influence" being (checks notes) spreading propaganda in favor of pescatarianism and healthy natural eating?
It is a wholesome ad, but as I don't care that my shoes are handmade, I also don't care if the supermarket ad is without AI.
There are people who do care about both. Does that bother you?
I'm ok with people caring about whatever they want. What I dislike is people trying to create artificial groups. Like "pro AI" and "anti AI" then try to sell them shit because now this is part of their tribe.
You can also just skip advertising to whole world about what you dislike, and your projected dislikes of whatever else you need to complain about, unrelated to original topic of a simple ad for enjoying Christmas with others regardless of your origins while eating well. Nobody here is doing anything you complain about.
People really don't care that much, especially when for something positive, original and funny somebody grumpy comes along and tries to drag discussion down their misery pit.
The best ad for diversity and inclusion I've seen so far.