Prada answered AI slop with a pencil: 6 million views and mice in the style of Disney
The Drawing Prada campaign with hand-drawn animation by John Pomeroy has gathered more than 6 million views. Hand drawing is becoming a luxury privilege in the era of AI slop.
A segment of Prada's winter campaign, in which mice steal the brand's leopard-print shoes, has gathered more than 6 million views on the Italian house's official Instagram*. That's more than most ad videos with generative neural-network footage, which the industry has been churning out for two years running. There's one difference: there was nothing to generate here.
What the campaign is about
Prada launched the project Drawing Prada. Footage featuring actresses Maya Hawke and Sadie Sink — the one from "Stranger Things" — and other performers was complemented with hand-drawn animation. The drawn mice, foxes, rabbits and other animals reference classic Disney cartoons from the 1970s–1980s.
The team of artists was led by John Pomeroy, a 75-year-old animator who worked at Disney for nearly ten years. The brand also published a video showing the process of creating the storyboards — more than 1.2 million views on the company's Instagram*. Showing the labor is part of the concept.
Who is Pomeroy
His career deserves a line of its own. Pomeroy worked with Disney from 1973 to 1979, then again from the 1990s through 2003. He worked on "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too" (1974), "The Fox and the Hound" (1981), "Pocahontas" (1995) and "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" (2001). At the independent studio Don Bluth Productions, he animated "The Land Before Time" (1988) and "All Dogs Go to Heaven" (1989).
"Hand-drawn animation lets you see the value of the human touch," says Pomeroy. Hero magazine notes that the ad caught attention precisely because the viewer could feel the labor invested in it.
What this changes for the premium segment
The practical question is this: what does hand-drawn work change for luxury brands? The answer is positioning. While mass-market brands adopt neural networks, handcrafted labor is becoming a marker of price and status. Users on social media write directly that in the "era of AI slop" this kind of advertising stands out and "brings back childhood," and hand drawing is becoming a privilege of premium players.
The contrast is obvious. In 2025 alone, fully generated ads were released by Coca-Cola and the Dutch McDonald's, and Vogue put an AI model on its cover. The industry has split into those saving on production and those betting on rarity.
Prada chose the latter. And got 6 million views for it.
*Instagram belongs to Meta, which is recognized as extremist and banned in Russia.
Source: vc.ru
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