The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2024
Toys R Us made the first brand ad with OpenAI's Sora — creatives called it a nightmare
Toys R Us debuted a brand film made with OpenAI's Sora at Cannes. Creatives called it 'uncanny' and asked why the company fired its artists.
Toys R Us · Native Foreign (agency)
What happened
In June 2024, Toys R Us debuted a one-minute brand film at the Cannes Lions conference. The video told the origin story of founder Charles Lazarus alongside mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe. It was created by agency Native Foreign using OpenAI's Sora — a text-to-video model not yet publicly available. It was billed as the first brand video ever made with Sora.
The backlash from the creative community was immediate. Comedian Mike Drucker mocked the ad on X, joking that Toys R Us 'fired our artists' to generate nightmarish footage. Comic artist Andy Kluthe said the brand should have hired real actors, arguing it would look 'a thousand times less uncanny.' Critics pointed to distorted objects, inconsistent character models, and the general uncanny-valley quality of the AI-generated imagery.
Toys R Us Studios president Kim Miller Olko called the video 'successful' and said AI would become 'part of our toolkit.' She dismissed concerns about replacing workers, saying 'until you really see what it is, you don't really have a true understanding.' The gap between the executive's enthusiasm and the creative community's condemnation defined the coverage.
Why it happened
- The AI quality was the evidence: distorted objects and inconsistent faces proved Sora was not ready — the ad was its own argument against the tool.
- The creative community was the audience: debuting an AI-made ad at Cannes Lions — a festival celebrating creative craft — was a provocation to the exact professionals the technology threatens.
- The executive dismissal made it worse: 'We weren't going to hire a giraffe' told creatives their concerns about job displacement were being compared to casting a giraffe.
- The 'first' claim was the strategy: being first with Sora was the story — but the ad proved why being first with an unproven tool is a risk, not an achievement.
The lesson
Being first to use a tool is not the same as being right to use it. If the creative community calls your ad a nightmare, 'part of our toolkit' is not the answer — the toolkit is the problem.
Sources
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