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Hating On AI Becomes A Marketing Trend
Courtesy of Heineken
Several major brands across consumer goods, fashion, and food & beverage are making an anti-AI stance central to their marketing campaigns.
The Big Picture: As AI sweeps across society, a cultural divide is emerging between those excited by the technology and those wary of it — a Pew study found that 50% of Americans are “more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life.” Leaning into that tension has become a pretty effective way to get ads noticed.
Between The Lines: The AI resistance is on a billboard near you.
Heineken skewered the can’t-miss marketing of AI-wearable startup Friend with a billboard that reads: “The best way to make a friend is over a beer.”
Aerie posted on Insta that it would never use AI models in any of its marketing — a clapback at H&M. It was the company’s most popular post this year.
Polaroid put up billboards in NYC near Apple and Google stores that said: “No one on their deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I’d spent more time on my phone.’”
Cadbury launched “Make AI Mediocre Again,” imagining a world where people spam the internet with garbage content to crash AI... freeing up more time to eat chocolate in peace.
The Future: These campaigns follow a wave of unpopular AI-generated ads from Coca-Cola and Toys “R” Us that audiences largely rejected. As Haley Hunter, cofounder of ad agency Party Land, put it, AI media clashes with the authenticity that drives online culture.
A study by creative-testing platform DAIVID backs that up — after analyzing 21 AI-made ads from brands like Volvo and Puma, it found that while viewers reacted more strongly, their emotions were overwhelmingly negative.
Prediction: The anti-AI brands may become popular additions to Gen Z and millennials’ analog bags. Call it “unplugging as an identity.”
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.