The cost of one second

Some brands want you to know how long their Christmas film took. With AI everywhere, you might need to see it to believe it.

Four hours. That's how long each second of Levi's Christmas film took to shoot, part of an estimated 2 000 hours of production in total. Petit Bateau's agency looked at its deadline, concluded that neither a shoot nor 3D could make it, and made its film with AI.

Two answers to the same Christmas brief. And a Dior film shows why the first answer now needs a second step.

Showing the hours

Levi's "Let's Get Fuzzy" is a stop-motion film by Stevie Gee and Essy May of Blinkink. The puppets wear tiny hand-knitted copies of real pieces from the holiday collection: the product, rebuilt stitch by stitch.

But the clever part is the making-of Levi's put out with it. Once you've seen it, you watch the film differently. You notice the texture of the puppets, the tiny movements, the clothes. The 2 000 hours aren't just a number anymore. You can see them.

Prada and Barbour are doing the same thing. "Drawing Prada" is drawn by hand, and in Barbour's Wallace and Gromit film with Aardman, you can still spot fingerprints in the clay. You can tell someone made it.

When proof isn't enough

Then there's Dior. It hired Sylvain Chomet, the director of The Triplets of Belleville, to make Christian Dior's Night in Color, a seven-minute film drawn by hand. Once it came out, some viewers asked if it was AI. They pointed to some warped lettering and an eye that looked a bit off.

There's no evidence it was. But that's what makes it interesting. A famous animator's name on the credits wasn't enough to stop people wondering. The small flaws that used to show a person made something now make some viewers think a machine did.

That's why the Levi's making-of matters. Craft used to speak for itself. Now, with AI images everywhere, people want to see the proof.

The film made another way

Petit Bateau went the other way. L'extraordinaire voyage de Doudou follows a lost comfort toy across Paris in winter as it finds its way back to a child. The agency, Orès Collective, used AI because there wasn't time to shoot it or make it in 3D. Its creative director, Léa Debretagne, sees it differently. For her, the limits aren't technical anymore. They come down to what a team dares to imagine.

Both can be true, but they're not the same story. One is about speed, the other about ambition. And speed is the harder story to sell: Coca-Cola's AI Christmas ads were criticised two years in a row.
Still, the film works. It feels warm, and you want Doudou to make it home. That's the job of a Christmas film, whatever it's made with.

None of this proves that handmade films are better. A boring ad isn’t better just because it took longer to make.

When effort becomes the message

Handmade isn't automatically better. A boring film is still boring, however long each second took, and Doudou shows an AI film can still get to you. It always starts with the idea.

But if you're briefing a Christmas film for 2027, how it was made is no longer invisible. Plan for it:

• If you invest in craft, budget for showing it. The making-of is part of the campaign, not a bonus.
• If you use AI, say why. Make sure it’s a reason your audience will respect.
• Either way, assume someone will ask how it was made. Have the answer ready.

Making something by hand used to be the message. Now, proving it is.

12 November 2026