This year, marketers felt pressure to stand out creatively while maintaining control of their work. As AI became more actionable and consumers pressured brands to prove their values, campaigns faced heightened scrutiny for their messaging.

“AI is leveling the bottom of the funnel, which makes differentiated brand creative and storytelling more important than ever,” said Scott Harkey, CEO of The Harkey Group.

Here are some of this year’s most memorable ad campaigns, which surpassed siloed marketing conversations on Linkedin and got consumers talking.

American Eagle and Sydney Sweeney

“Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” is one of the most talked-about ad campaigns of the year. Clothing brand American Eagle tapped Sweeney as their spokesperson this summer, and it has since faced steady backlash for what some consumers consider eugenics undertones.

Despite the backlash, the brand stood behind the campaign. “Sydney Sweeney is worth every single dollar that we invested,” CMO Craig Brommers told Morning Brew.

The campaign boosted engagement, but wasn’t a major sales driver. American Eagle brand rose just 1% YoY in the quarter, an improvement from previous quarters but below its expectations of 2.1% growth.

The campaign was a reminder that advertising is now a “two-way dialogue,” and consumers can easily take over, said our analyst Sky Canaves in a “Behind the Numbers” episode.

"A big lesson from this American Eagle controversy is that brands don't control the narrative of their campaigns, as much as they might try to,” she said.

E.l.f beauty and Matt Rife

E.l.f. Beauty, a brand often praised for its social impact, launched a campaign starring controversial comedian Matt Rife in August. The partnership was seen by some consumers as a departure from e.l.f.'s core audience values of social responsibility and inclusivity, where brands that pull back are facing consequences.

• Some 40% of Gen Z adults, and 19% of total US adults, have stopped using and purchasing from brands that have reversed or contradicted their DEI efforts, per a March Ad Age and Harris Poll survey.

In this partnership, the brand went wrong by chasing a broader audience and losing sight of its long-term consumers, said Crystal Foote, founder of Digital Culture Group.

“Make sure those loyalists who have been with you since day one continue to feel comfortable buying your product,” she said.

Coca-Cola’s second AI act

• Coca-Cola didn’t seem to mind last year’s backlash to their AI-generated holiday commercial, so they returned with another one this year.

The Coca-Cola brand can shield it from losses tied to AI experimentation, but that won’t be the case for every brand, said our analyst Arielle Feger in a “Behind the Numbers” episode.

“The minute you say ‘This is an AI commercial,’ people are zoomed in and looking for inconsistencies,” she said. “That’s a pretty big risk…for smaller brands who maybe don’t have that brand loyalty on their side.”

About half of US adults think AI will hurt creative thinking (53%), according to a June Pew Research Center study, but data on whether that concern translates to advertising performance is mixed.

• Only 24.7% of US consumers dislike an ad more when they know it’s created by AI, according to a March EMARKETER survey.

McDonald’s is lovin' AI

Beyond making consumers feel creatively uninspired, AI has sparked discomfort. That was the case for a McDonald’s ad in the Netherlands, which the brand admitted was built almost entirely with AI.

It was not just attacked for the eeriness of its AI use, but also its tone. Rewriting “It’s The Most Wonderful Time of The Year” as “It’s The Most Terrible Time of The Year,” consumers said it missed the mark, and McDonald's got the message. The fast food giant took down the ad soon after its release.

“I’ve noticed that AI gets its sense of humor from the most unfunny corners of the internet,” said TikTok user @soggybrocoli. “It’s the snarky, contrarian, quirk humor that you would see off the cutting room floor of Deadpool.”

After pulling the ad, McDonald’s Netherlands told BBC News in a statement it was “an important learning” for the company’s understanding of “the effective use of AI.”

“Since when does *McDonald’s* hate Christmas?” wrote Borrowed Pen founder Natalie Hussey in a Linkedin post. “Remember the runaway commercial or the inner child commercial? Those are gorgeous nostalgic ads that absolutely captured the meaning of Christmas.”

Cracker Barrel’s crockpot of tears

This summer, Cracker Barrel simplified its look to appear sleeker, removing its long-standing logo of a man leaning against a barrel. Many of its consumers didn’t take the change well, and about a week later, the brand reverted to its original identity.

Both e.l.f and Cracker Barrel failed by shocking their core audience this year. The Cracker Barrel rebrand didn’t work because it was unexciting and unattractive to its existing consumers, said analyst Rachel Wolff in a “Behind the Numbers” episode.

"If you're looking to attract Gen Z, for example, I don't think 'blah' is what's going to do it," said Wolff. "You're both alienating your existing customer base and not doing enough to attract the customer that you want."

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