Infographic:
Video: here
Essay: Continued below...
Infographic:
Video: here
Essay: Continued below...
Svedka is a vodka company based in New York that was founded by Guillame Cuvelier in 1998. The company recently emerged from a 12-year dormant period of refraining from active advertisement. And what did they decide on for their first big commercial back, airing during the 2026 Superbowl? A fully AI-generated advertisement, featuring two robot characters promoting their product. The commercial opens with one of the robots knocking on the camera, followed by both of them grabbing Svedka products and mixing a drink together while dancing for a crowd of humans you're not exactly able to make out. In drinking the products, one robot’s circuits begin sparking from the strength of the alcohol, and both robots continue dancing before the camera finally settles on the vodka products advertised. While people who do not have a strong stance one way or another for AI-generated content, the commercial is a little bit confusing to be promoting an alcoholic drink, which normally doesn't have anything to do with AI, with AI. In my essay, I want to analyze the Svedka commercial, critique it fairly, and provide commentary on why I think AI in advertisements may be more confusing in its rhetoric and thus the messaging may be lost on the intended audience.
"vodka" by danmachold is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 
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The advertisement itself required focus on a party-like setting in order to sell the fact that alcohol is meant to be a party drink used for social settings. Vodka specifically is among the strongest of alcoholic drinks, which Svedka pushes in their advertisement as the best way to have a good time in a social setting by having one of the robots in the commercial drink the mixed alcohol only for its circuits to begin sparking to display how strong the drink is. The knocking on the camera by the female robot in the beginning is also symbolic of Svedka pulling back the curtains on themselves, trying to tell the audience that they’re back from dormancy and have something new to share that they think the audience will enjoy as they advertise their product. The music chosen, a remix of Super Freak by Rick James, is a song about a girl who is openly kinky and up front about her desires for a good time via sex, which is a commonly taboo yet strongly desired subject as a source of entertainment among people alongside alcohol. In their advert, though, the lack of human presence whether intended to or not creates a confusing and uncomfortable commercial that does not sell their product so much as it invites room for strong criticism.
"Elite Passport Kick Off at Delhi Heights" by Yelp.com is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 
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Upon the advertisement being released, many of the reactions were perceived as negative by networks such as Culture, the Medium, and Adweek. Reported to have cost around at least $12-13 million to secure and produce a Super Bowl ad, the company actually has not made much of that money back according to Sara Saunders, Chief Marketing Officer. Unfortunately, I have yet to find genuine positive responses to the ad, mostly finding neutral confusion at best as seen in the creatives’ reaction article from Adweek. Not to say that I have not tried (really, I tried) to find positive reactions.
Svedka is an alcohol brand that creates vodka products for the purpose of mixing alcoholic drinks, and claims that they are the drink of the future according to their website. Svedka appears to have a popular audience among young people around the legal alcohol drinking age. Now, when putting out their commercial for the superbowl, Svedka explained that the robots inserted into the commercial were to "remind the humans how to be human" by mixing drinks and partying (Walters). I'd also like to talk about why the lack of clear human presence presents more of a disconnect between the human audience and the advertised product.
Throughout the commercial, the model seems to warp what humans do make appearances in order to favor the focus on the robot characters. In taking away any distinction for the humans who dance around the crowd, there's a much less clear distinction on who exactly Svedka's product is for. Sure, you're able to say it's for adults above legal drinking age, but the short advertisement's blurry and confusing angles are rather weak in the areas explaining why that is. There's no clear face to any one human, and it takes away some of the relatability a run-of-the-mill commercial is supposed to have. People love seeing themselves in others, especially advertisements and other televised areas.
To pull an outside example, Xbox recently hosted an ad campaign as part of support for women gamers, as women in gaming fields have faced harassment and sexism in game lobbies. Including women in a company’s audience is important because alongside maximizing profits by reaching as many audiences as possible, a diversified audience shows an embracing of all forms of backgrounds and cultures. Svedka’s superbowl commercial intends to reach its audience of young alcohol drinkers, yet the lack of human presence or input shows little representation of said audience and thus it’s more projecting into the void.
The absence of human roles and work on Svedka's commercial make the product feel like it's supposed to be actually advertising to an audience that does not really exist. Even in its obvious intent as a product made for humans, the lack of actual human presence instead of AI-generated cast can unintentionally alienate the targeted consumers. Rather than relying on AI fully to present a product, if they still wanted AI to be in their commercial at all, Svedka could have shown an advertisement of humans drinking their product in their commercial along with AI generated creations such as the robots in the commercial. I don't feel like a fully AI ad after 12 years of commercial dormancy was the best move for Svedka to do. The ad that they put out, while claimed to be "pro-human", has so little focus on humans that it feels rather uncanny. When faced with criticism for having little to no human input either, the company decided on just welcoming it while not really using it to change direction in advertisement, saying they simply wanted to "add to the conversation on technology vs humanity" (Walters). With an AI company itself, I understand, but what exactly is an alcohol company supposed to contribute to the AI conversation?
Full disclosure, while working on this project, it took me up to the point of a couple of days before this paper was due to recognize that the instructions asked for an advertisement from an AI company itself, be it either Claude or ChatGPT. I argue, however, that the conversation for AI ads from unrelated companies is equally as important because they are what are directly affected by generative AI tools. We’ve seen it in Coca-Cola’s AI christmas ad, and we’ve just seen it in Svedka. Companies aplenty are seeking AI to aid them in commercialized content, yet they don’t seem as prepared for the potential backlash generative commercials have had if Svedka’s response to their own backlash and criticism is anything to go by. AI advertisements should be more carefully vetted if a company wishes to go through with one, and at the very least deserve more human input over a confusing ad about robots that doesn’t appear to have any messaging deeper than “our drinks are so good that if you drink them you’ll be as cool as these robots.”
Images presented in this visual essay are cited under fair use, and were located within Flickr. Special thank you to Dr. Kevin Jefferson for showing me how to utilize non-copyrighted images.