The Drink Cart: Carts of Darkness
The only ad newsletter that costs $100 million dollars less than The Stephen Colbert Show, delivers harder than a 70s brand collab and doesn’t end with a Swedish king overeating.
Dear marketing fans, cinnamon bun truthers, eaters of bat heads and bourbon drinking cats with eye patches.
I wasn’t sure where to start this newsletter. I’d be lying if I hadn’t written too many emails, landing pages and decks this week. But then I saw a random meme. A meme about a Swedish King Adolf Frederick.
I’m saying this as a human who may or may not have had a chocolate croissant four days in row. I’m not proud of that fact. But to be fair, I deliberately ate some broccolini last night to compensate this butter incursion. But that’s not what you came to this newsletter to hear about.
Here’s the thing with memes. Did old Aldolf Frederick really die in 1771 after eating 14 cinnamon buns? Can you even die from eating 14 cinnamon buns? I know for a fact that you can comfortably eat at least four Cinnabon buns over the course of a few days during a pandemic. That’s scientific evidence. I’ll have a cinnamon bun eating contest with every damn one of you subscribers if that’s what it takes to figure this one out.
But here’s the story about fun loving Adolf Frederick. No he didn’t actually “eat himself to death.” And it was certainly not with cinnamon buns anyway. It was possibly a party night binge featuring 14 semla pastries (a Swedish eclair? Come on), champagne, lobster, caviar, sauerkraut and kippers. And by mentioning kippers, The Drink Cart Legal Department informs me that I’m required to drop this Fawlty Towers sequence. I can’t even imagine that you could choose to eat at the Fawlty Towers restaurant.
Like Basil Fawlty, this story was pure 1700s clickbait. Sure, the post mortem detailed (This is starting to turn into a Netflix Train Wreck newsletter isn’t it), “A bluish redness all over the back and loins, as well as all around the neck. The abdomen, especially above the navel, was much dissolved.” A smear campaign dressed up as history. We don’t even know the difference anymore. But this guy has been bullied for eating too many cinnamon buns for over 250 years. Don’t even get me started about trying to ruin the art of Fika with this story either.
But hey, that’s advertising isn’t. Spin a boring royal death into a sticky headline and suddenly some random Swedish pastry is trending for 250 years.
The real lesson: Even before AI, the story didn’t need to be true — just super sticky. What you need to be is the one writing the headline, not starring in it. I’m not going to relate this to the Coldplay kiss cam, but you get the idea about that.
Drink Cart Approved™ agency discussion topics
Oh, good. Car rentals are using AI to scan and show you all the dings you make on the car.
Oh and Norway’s $2T wealth fund let Claude run their investment workflow for a year. TL; DR: This saved 213,000 hours and boosted productivity by 20%.
I love that original Star Trek was doing set design and colour just to sell more colour TVs.
I’m not even sure that this is accurate, but it sounds accurate. 8% of all searches with an AI summery lead to a web click. Vs. 15% when there isn’t an AI summery. do with that what you will.
Speaking of which, people are now talking about AX vs. UX. AX is kind of like thinking your site remembers, nudges and even evolves so your users never start over. But If I see you have that on your Linkedin I’m calling BS.
Sneaking in baseball content: The Toronto Blue Jays average 1 million viewers a game. Meanwhile 365,000 viewers watched the Subway Series of the Mets vs. Yankees. This is crazy.
Ad history: Early Times Bourbon (1970s)
This ad is every creative director’s fever dream. Bourbon? Check. Goblet of boubon with a lemon wedge the size of your head? Check. A literal cat with a an eyepatch because the Art Director was channeling David Ogilvy’s Man in the Hathaway shirt ad? Also check.
Early Times bourbon had it all. This is what happens when your brainstorm is 90% whiskey and 10% “we need to win a Cannes Lion.”
Back then, ads didn’t need strategy decks. They needed lots of all night bourbon, a pun and a house cat with attitude and the ability to wear an eye patch. Side note. I don’t think it’s an accident that upon this research and the heavy intro Swedish pre-Ozempic life content, that my feed delivered a 1993 artwork about cats by Christine Erickson. The algorithms are always listenting.
These Boots Were Made for Happy Hour
Chili’s and Tecovas just served up a collab nobody had on their bingo card but everybody secretly wants. Booth-red leather, spicy stitching and a belt to boot (literally made from booths).
It’s yeehaw Americana meets queso-fueled runway style, and yet somehow, it works. What’s the takeaway? Restaurant brands don’t just have to sell food, they have to sell moments too. This isn’t about the boots. It’s about proving Chili’s still knows how to get people talking without a discount code. The product itself is almost secondary.
If your collab isn’t as good as this try again
In 1980, we got the breakfast collab we never knew we needed. McDonald’s decided your hotcakes, sausage and the egg muffins needed to team up with Bic to throw in a free razor.
As you do. Because nothing says “balanced breakfast” like scraping your jawline between bites of syrup-drenched carbs. This is completely bizarre, but also low-key genius: breakfast traffic, brand mashup and the unspoken tagline, “Shave minutes off your morning and your face.”
So how did the pitch play out? You know my schtick from the last few issues. It’s script time!
INT MCDONALD’S HQ BOARDROOM
COPYWRITER: Okay. It’s morning rush hour in 1980. A typical business bro in an impossibly wide tie and outdated sideburns grabs for his precious McMuffins.
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: And what if — hear us out — every breakfast comes with a Bic razor?
BRAND MANAGER: Sorry, are we giving people grooming products with pancakes?
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: It’s not just a meal, it’s a morning reset. Eat, shave, conquer the day. Call it synergy. You know, in the 2020s they’ll gonna call this “rise and grind.” or something like that. We are three decades ahead of the curve.
COPYWRITER: McDonald’s and Bic. It’s fuelling faces and stomachs, one tray at a time.
BRAND MANAGER: Wait are we a barbershop now?
CREATIVE DIRECTOR: No. We’re a lifestyle.
BRAND MANAGER: Ohhhhhh. I hate how much I love this.
Last call: The Drink Cart The Black Sabbath
I’m not a huge Black Sabbath guy. But Ozzy Osbourne doing his last show and then almost immediately shuffling off this planet? That’s a headline I’ll always click. As the Drink Cart, I was compelled to read dozens of Ozzy headlines and stories like, “Ozzy Osbourne Confesses to Drinking 28 Gallons of Alcohol to Get Through Christmas” and I can’t help but think, this man should have been in advertising.
The chaos, the endurance the commitment to the bit. But just remember this Pepsi Twist ad he did.
Anyway, think of this cocktail like the Crazy Train Old Fashioned. Equal parts bourbon, bitters and pure bat-biting rock and roll energy. And yeah, I love Old Fashioneds. So here’s the toast: a drink that feels like his home town Birmingham pubs, Black Sabbath blasting on vinyl, him yelling “Shaarrrrrroooooon” and the glow of a jukebox cutting through cigarette haze while you’re doing your time sheets.
Here’s my take on the recipe:
2 oz Scotch whisky
1 oz Amaro Averna
½ tsp Absinthe. Don’t got it? Use Pastis.
¼ oz Cherry Heering to give it that bat head blood vibe.
1 dash Orange bitters
Garnish with a really good cherry.
This week also marks the 36th anniversary of The Pixies’ classic Debaser.
And if you think that’s old. Try this from the 69th anniversary of this classic from High Society. (Or this one)
The Drink Cart is your weekly fuel for pop culture brains and ad junkies. A cocktail of ad insights and hot takes that feel like you’re hanging at your favourite dive bar after launching your latest campaign.
Pouring one out for Ozzy this week! ✌🏻