BIG, DUMB AND FULLY COMMITTED

The only newsletter that thinks the bravest thing a brand did this World Cup was fourteen Os.

The World Cup isn’t a soccer tournament. Not to ad people. To us it’s a six-week-long open bar where every brand on earth has clearly had one too many.

A few commit to something so stupid it loops back around to genius. Most of them embarrass themselves. Others issue press releases so stuffed with word salad (meeting the moment, meaningful, relevant and authentic), you could build a drinking game around them.

COORS LIGHT PRINTED FOURTEEN OS AND DIDN’T FLINCH

The Tallerboy is an 18-inch stainless steel canister that holds three stacked cans of Coors Light, named for the sound of a goal. The brand stretched Coors to Coooors all summer in honor of Andrés Cantor’s bottomless “Goooool,” then kept going and stretched the can with fourteen Os.

Here’s the part that takes it from dumb to perfect. You can’t drink from it. It’s an insulated holder. You slide three cans in like tennis balls and pull one out when you want it. Coors built an 18-inch monument to not getting off the couch. Thirty bucks.

And it’s great. Not despite being idiotic — because of it. Somebody had the chance to value-engineer the joke down to a koozie with a logo and instead said no, make it a foot and a half tall and spell the name like a man falling down the stairs. That’s the brief working exactly as intended. Make it big and silly and commit to the bit.

FIVE BEERS, ONE KETCHUP, AND AN INDUSTRY LOSING ITS MIND

Heinz and Heineken put out a six-pack where the sixth beer is a bottle of Heinz ketchup and called it “The match we’ve all been waiting for.”

Heinz’s first global brand collab in 150-odd years.

Then LinkedIn went to war about it.

Richard Clark, freelance strategist, wanted to know “in what universe do large numbers of people hit the booze aisle for Heineken” and also happen to want ketchup? Great question.

Ben Kay, a group creative director, said the trouble isn’t understanding the idea, it’s “the people who proudly post it on LinkedIn, suggesting it’s anything other than a stupid idea with ugly execution.”

Dan Beaumont kept it to one clean knife: “it’s definitely creative (fun) but does that mean it’s a good idea?” And Duane Bruton asked if anyone in that boardroom had ever been to a BBQ, because no host needs more ketchup and a loose bottle wedged into a carrier “isn’t a gift. It’s a weird beer tax.”

Andrew Tindall was the lonely defender. “For an industry that "champions creativity", the insane commenters below who can't get their heads around a cross-category play say it all.”

Oh, nobody’s supposed to buy this for the logic. It’s simply a visual built to be screenshotted. The work is fine. The comment section is the campaign.

JEEP IS BETTING THE FARM ON 350 GUYS NAMED GEORGE

Jeep’s offer, in full: if the US men’s team wins the entire World Cup, the first 100 Americans legally named George Washington who register could each drive home in a 2026 Wrangler.

The US is a 50-to-1 long shot. There are, best anyone can count, about 350 living Americans actually named George Washington. So Jeep built a national TV campaign around a giveaway contingent on a near-impossible result, capped at a name almost nobody has, max exposure around $3.6 million they will almost certainly never pay.

The whole thing is a dare to the universe that you register at wranglerforwashingtons.com. A real website that exists.

Iliza Shlesinger sheds her Jeep Chief Family Officer title for Chief Soccer Officer and delivers a rallying cry from behind a desk, under an oil portrait of George Washington riding a Wrangler.

BANK GOALS

Two Canadian banks looked at the World Cup and decided it belonged to them.

TD went first. With Leo Toronto on creative, Ogilvy on strategy, the hero activation is a literal welcome mat at Union Station and a promise that staff can help arriving fans in 80-plus languages.

Okay?

It's the TD marketing VP quote that gets me, “this unprecedented cultural moment” in a way that’s “meaningful, relevant and authentic.” That’s a bank brand in a soccer scarf.

Coors committed to fourteen Os, Heinz to a joke, Jeep to a portrait of Washington in a Wrangler. TD committed to three adjectives. A welcome mat is a doormat with a LinkedIn account.

Then BMO staked their claim to “Grow the Game.” TBWA\Canada, a spot where Lamorne Morris calls himself “the Alphonso Davies of banking” while the real Alphonso Davies juggles behind him. Murals, streetcar wraps, station takeovers, an ATM that dispenses fan gear, a thing called the “DeskShaw”.

The creative’s fine and BMO has apparently put real money into Canadian soccer for twenty years. But here’s the quote. Hosting this is “a once-in-a-generation cultural moment” and they (the bank) wanted to show up “as big and participatory as the event itself.”

You know what I don’t need from my bank? Them connecting me to a cultural moment.

AD LESSONS

Remember: An idea’s power equals how dumb it is multiplied by how fully you commit to it. The dumb-brilliant detail isn’t the thing you apologize for. It’s the whole idea.

Every winner this week lives there. Coors committed to fourteen Os and a can you can’t drink from. Jeep committed to a giveaway that needs a 50-to-1 miracle and a 100 guys named George Washington. Nobody sanded the dumb part off.

The banks took a whole world arriving in their city and sanded it down to meaningful, relevant, authentic, once-in-a-generation gobbledygook until nothing was sharp enough to remember was left.

Commit to “authentic” instead of to a specific, stupid, particular thing and you’ve committed to nothing. The nothing is what people remember.

COCKTAIL OF THE WEEK: PITCH BIRD

Spent a few days in Minneapolis shooting some content and handed the map to Marco Ortiz, who walked me around a few of the city’s incredible bars. iI you want to see a city, follow the cocktail creator who used to bartend.

Mara, inside the Four Seasons, pours a thing called Pearanoia. Bosc pear, Calvados, amontillado, cardamom, lemon. A cocktail pun that was actually delicious.

Spoon and Stable had a single barrel rum Zombie with soursop, pineapple-rosemary cordial and ancho. You have to respect a simpler but elegant take on a tiki classic.

But the one that got me was the Tapaculo at Flora Room. Made by Jaxon. A variation on the Jungle Bird with gin, mezcal, pineapple, banana, red bitter, sweet vermouth and garnished with a banana Runt. That’s the whole thing in one glass. A bar mixing mezcal and gin with the same hands that’ll plant a banana Runt on top is not messing around. That’s a bar that knows exactly what they are doing.

You can drop this nugget at the happy hour later today: The Jungle Bird was invented in 1973 at the Aviary Bar at the Kuala Lumpur Hilton in Malaysia. It proved that Campari and pineapple were made for each other. End of story.

I don’t have runts or anything banana so this is a Jungle Bird that put on cleats. I’m calling it the Pitch Bird. Pitch as in the field. Pitch as in the thing every one of us has stood in a conference room and died a little delivering.

The Pitch Bird

• 1 oz gin

• 1 oz mezcal

• 1 oz Campari

• 1 oz sweet vermouth

• 1 oz pineapple juice

Shake hard with ice and strain over fresh ice in a rocks glass. Pineapple wedge if you’re feeling it.

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The Drink Cart is the newsletter version of sitting at a really good bar with someone who thinks too much about advertising and won’t shut up about it. Subscribe to get it on Wednesdays and Fridays.