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Time for a yearly reminder that Coca-Cola sales are about to plummet in Sweden.
Every year Coca-Cola sales drop by about 50% in Sweden over christmas as Swedes buy Julmust instead.
I have already stocked up with 12 glorious bottles of Zeunerts Julmust giving me 6 liters, I live alone so this is plenty.
What is the context for this? Is jusmult a culturally significant beverage around Christmas time? Is this a boycott of sorts? What is jusmult like?
I posted a link to the Wikipedia article about it, but yeah it is a culturally significant drink over Christmas, there is no organized boycott of Coca Cola, but I suspect that people enjoy the fact that Coca Cola tanks their sales in Sweden during christmas.
There are several versions of Julmust, there is one company making the syrup, selling it to drinks manufacturers, who all tweaks it to their preference.
The most common/standard version of Julmust is "Apotekarnes Julmust", though "Nygårda Julmust" has expanded a lot, there is one version that I didn't enjoy when I was younger, but is my favourite these days, "Zeunerts Julmust".
The taste of Apotekarners Julmust is quite hard to describe, the texture isn't as harsh as Coke, it is less sweet, and more fruity, it is a more adult taste than Coke, dryer...
The Zeunerts version is quite odd for the uninitiated, it has a darker taste when compared to Apotekarnes, with a weird aftertaste of coffee. When I first had it, I didn't like it at all, but these days I stock up on it.
But you'll need more next week!
Helt galet när alla vet att påskmust smakar bättre.
But won't someone think of all the extra bonus monies they can pay themselves as a result of avoiding paying human salaries? (Ironically, not even in this one bc the AI was so horrible that it required extensive clean up)
The article mentions Toys'R'Us, was it also written by AI or did I slip into a universe where they didn't go out of business?
I believe it's a blockbuster situation
I mean it's basic and boring but, considering the production cost was probably (a lot?) less than $1,000, compared to the $5,000+ it would've cost if filmed/animated traditionally, that seems like a win. And the average viewer isn't even gonna notice. In fact, they're getting plenty of free publicity for using AI to make it thanks to articles like these
my my, those boots sure must be tasty
I've been boycotting cocacola for years now. Not sure what you're on about
In fact, they’re getting plenty of free publicity for using AI to make it thanks to articles like these
good thing there’s no such thing as bad publicity, otherwise this shit would be fucking embarrassing
I would guess the original commercial was in the vicinity of 10 million? And the new one would be like...$10k? Maybe more.
I don't know the actual budget, but I think it probably cost much more than 1kUSD, though probably still less than real human work would cost.
It's important to note that no shit could last more than a second or two because after that the generated video starts to much more noticably have errors. So at minimum you still need editors (plus the music needed to be composited, etc). Also, as the article notes, all the logos needed to be added in post as well because GenAI cannot reliably do text or logos. With that in mind, I'd guess there was probably a significant amount of "cleaning up" that had to be done in post as well.
With all that said and done, I'm sure the commercial was not exactly dirt cheap, but it WAS probably still cheaper than having dignity and paying humans.
What's actually kind of wild, though, is a lot of these shots just look like bland stock imagery. And since they couldn't have any cohesion between shots because of GenAI's own limitations, the majority of these shots could have been replaced with stock footage and they probably would have only needed to CGI a few different shots...
What if I told you that the goal was not to make a good product, but to increase shareholder valuation?
In that case, all the "problems" disappear in light of chasing after the singular goal.
I think your prices are off by about 1000x, but your main argument holds up.
My brain is stuck on 90s prices (I ran an advertisement company as a toddler)