The Drink Cart: Trust The Grift
The only newsletter guaranteed to calculate exactly how many Old Fashioneds it takes to make ChatGPT prompts sound like reasonable ideas.
Dear marketing fans, AI snake oil salespeople and those wanting to sell you a “genuine, bona-fide, electrified, six-car monorail! What'd I say?
Monorail! What’s it called? Monorail?”This week I got sucked into a worm hold of people fighting on Linkedin over AI and all I could think of was one of the greatest Simpsons episodes of all time.
Sucked in is a strong word. It was more like watching Bravo’s reality show, The Valley. A train-wreck of idiocy that you can’t stop watching or reading about.
It started with reading an AI implementing dude name Tom Head post the click bait-yest hook, “The agency world has 18 months left.” Rude. Does he not know that Canada now has our very own first Minister of Artificial Intelligence? (Who it must be said reposted an AI generated image in the campaign.)
Now to be fair to Tom he does actually offer a few brutally honest things agency’s can do about this, but he knew what he was doing. Having had a few conversations with clients this week about AI, I think that only one of these statements are actually true, “1. A junior with Midjourney can replace multiple £50-£70K designers. 2. AI can draft campaigns faster than your team (who’s reinventing the wheel every time anyway) 3. AI analytics outperform your insights department.”
If you’ve worked in advertising and marketing at any level of scale, those first too are so far from being reality it’s not even funny. Sure, if you’re an AI guy doing a grift, AI can make your campaigns. And yes, AI sure is going to force its way into every stage of the process and drive some efficiency - there’s no doubt about that. But I hear time and time again is people wanting it to be made by humans.
It’s clear that AI will change and shape everything moving forward, but will it end the art of creativity and thinking outside the box? I doubt that very much. But this is the kind of post that gets over 3000 reactions and lots of comments and reposts in 2025.
Dean S. a creative director jumped in with a “Fantasticly idiotic comment. Top work. 👏” He also pointed out the main problem with most commentary about AI and agencies is that it’s not even being written by anyone who works within the industry. You can only imagine the Hunger Games in the comments section at this point.
Nick de Jardine writes a wonderful counter narrative to Head’s. His click bait offering is, “The design industry has 6 months left. Maybe 3.” Yikes, that is before he unloads with the punchline, “My neighbour’s dog just made a logo with ChatGPT and Canva. It wasn’t good, but it was fast.”
That sounds about right. Like Jardine, these posts while terrifying to the industry in a time of uncertainty, tariffs and insourcing are all part of an AI thought leadership grift. The same thing when I am told that to stay competitive as an agency we need to hire cheaper design resources in South America.
Greg Hahn, the co-founder of Mischief, had his own take on this subject. “The current AI revolution is about replacing intellect with machines.” Which is such a great summary and so clearly true when you read headlines about students paying $90k a year at NYU who are complaining about a professor who implemented AI-proofing assignments that they say interfered with their “learning styles.” If by learning style you mean replacing your thinking with quick fixes. There’s the grift.
Hahn’s solution is to build humanity’s moat (also a really good line), “In advertising, I would dig our ditch and fill it with the waters of emotion, EQ, subjective taste, and wisdom (to drive an annoying Silicon Valley metaphor into the ground). Those are the things we still have a hold on.”
As Marge says, “And that was the only folly the people of Springfield ever took on... Except for the Popsicle stick skyscraper, and that 50 ft magnifying glass, and the escalator to nowhere.”
Extreme Film Marketing
This is the most terrifying movie ad I’ve ever seen. The log truck from the franchise Final Destination, which I can’t believe they are making a new version called bloodlines. How are these just driving around? Well done to whoever pitched this and made it happen.
Ad History: Sony MD (1996)
These Japanese ads for the Sony MD are incredible. Featuring the music and band Jamiroquai which is so peak mid 90’s it’s not even possible. And I say that as someone show saw an actual human in the wild this week wearing acid wash jeans.
The MD or MiniDisc was a pseudo compact disk competitor which allowed you to store up to 90 minutes of music and was only discontinued in 2013. Let’s just say the thread where I found one of these earlier this week was awash in nostalgia. For the tech, the era and the band.
No wonder we’re still all in on 90’s nostalgia. Chilli’s is doing that with their radical rita right now. Here’s a hot take: Everything was better when celebrities just did secret overseas commercials like they were above it in North America.
The New Logo Launch Hall of Fame
Imagine leveraging the 60th Anniversary of NBC in 1986 to launch the new peacock logo. If you’re not getting every star from your legacy network to sing a song, you’re doing it all wrong. All logos need a song and dance number. It just makes sense.
Ad history: Newport (1989)
As promised on my Linkedin post, this 1989 menthol cigarette ad from Newport, with their iconic green ads was one of many from the period. The year is 1989. You're "alive with pleasure" from countless cheeky Menthol Newports in the park.
It's that awkward temperature between spring and summer. You misjudged the weather badly. Sometimes you just have to do an emergency jean short or jort conversion in the field. I don't make the rules. As the ad notes, "After all, if smoking isn't a pleasure, why bother?"
As promised, I did find this historical bank of 97 of them from 1980 and beyond. There’s even an incredible calendar. So light up, sit back and experience the storylines of being alive with pleasure. From jorts making to puppies, this campaign made the case for pairing smoking with the most ridiculous activities like playing the trombone on the beach or tug of wars. incredible archive of general silliness of a bygone era.
Last call: The Drink Cart The Suffering Bastard
This is another hotel made cocktail. This one, as the legend goes, begins in 1942 at Cairo’s Shepheard’s Hotel. Spoiler alert: The hotel burned down in 1952. But the barkeep during WWII, Joe Scialom was experimenting on hangover cures for the troops, as you do.
He ended up with The Suffering Bastard. A drink that ended up as part of the Tiki culture of the 1960s. The original called for a mix of gin and brandy, but the more modern takes sub that brandy out for whiskey. The drink was so popular in the war, there are stories of gallons of it being brought to the front lines.
Here’s the recipe:
1oz brandy (or whatever whiskey the government will allow you to purchase)
1oz gin
1/2 oz fresh squeeze lime juice
2-3 dashs Angostura bitters
Shake with ice before straining into a glass with fresh ice.
Ginger beer to top it up
Garnish with mint if you have some or a lime.
Drink Cart Approved™ agency bonus discussion topics
This post, “hands down the best thing I saw in Japan was a 12 year old wearing a tshirt with a picture of a shrimp on it that just said SCOLIOSIS” has over 3.7M views.
I think a lot about how terrible car screen UI design has always been.
Hot take: Food in baseball helmets is better than food not in baseball helmets. Discuss.
LOL. Max is changing its name back to HBO Max. Again. Brands are having a field day about this. Question: do we think “normies” even care about this stuff?
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.
I would bet those Final Destination logs are fake, otherwise it would be a legal nightmare. Also, I still remember getting my DQ sunday in a baseball hat as a kid and it was pretty exciting.