Drink Cart Friday Shot: Wrath of Corinthian Leather
Your Friday newsletter shot of stuff you’ll quote later and pretend you found yourself.
Dear marketing fans, this Friday Shot is built like a good pour: smooth on the surface, strong at the base and more fun than it probably should be.
Welcome to your Friday Shot: Drink in hand, college football on the brain, pancakes on the plate and legendary Ricardo Montalbán whispering sweet nothings into your ear holes.
But first, I promised you a shot. This one was championed by one of my favourite account people to work at our agency, Kaz. There wasn’t a time or place or client that she didn’t try to get Baby Guinness shots involved. She was not wrong. These are crowd pleasers on steroids. If you don’t like a Baby Guinness you are probably dead inside.
Only my people, the Irish, would turn their nation’s signature beer into shot that looks like it, but tastes nothing like it. Invented in the 1980s at a now closed pub named the Waxie Dargle famously for new fathers.
The Baby Guinness Shot
3/4 oz Kalhua
1/4 oz Bailey’s
Layer the Irish cream on top by pouring it over the back of a spoon so it floats and looks like a Guinness.
1. Beer Season
I’m spending way too much brainpower on college sports and tailgating right now, which is why Bud Light’s new LSU “tailgate safari” with Shane Gillis hit me hard. He’s a safari guide hunting tailgaters in the wild, baiting them with a cooler of Bud Light until the herd finally appears.
It’s dumb, funny and exactly the kind of thing that makes Saturdays in the fall feel like a religion.
2. Back To School
This is almost a year old, but finally showed up in my feed. And was so timely. I love these kinds of spots where the actor just gets to go for it.
3. I never wanted pancakes more
Every town has a diner that swears they make the best pancakes. Galesburg, Illinois has Judy’s Family Café, and they’ve taken that claim and slapped it on the internet with the energy of a local band designing their own album cover in MS Paint.
4. Best Thing I read this week was a six year old screenshot of a tweet
This is such a great way of thinking. I especially like the “Present more ideas than your client can possibly produce.” If you read one thing this week, this is it. And as a bonus the best thing i have seen this week was this calendar hanging in the bathroom of a brew pub. I can’t stop thinking about it.
5. Ad History Chrysler New Yorker (1988)
In the 1980’s Chrysler put Ricardo Montalbán in a suit and had him whisper about “the one thing you always wanted in a luxury car, rich Corinthian leather.” It wasn’t horsepower, handling or even engineering. It was leather, exotic by name, sensual by delivery.
The line worked because Montalbán sold it with so much freaking gravitas you almost forgot “Corinthian leather” was just another marketing invention. Yep. It’s true. In 1974 Chrysler didn’t have Italian engineering or German handling. What they had was leather. So Jim Nichols, a copywriter at Bozell, christened it “Rich Corinthian Leather.” No ties to Corinth, no exotic imports, just a line so smooth that Ricardo Montalbán could spin it into luxury gospel and advertising legend.
This is what copywriters do best: we make the ordinary feel inevitable, even legendary. A seat covering becomes a symbol, a beer becomes a culture, a tech spec becomes a movement. The product is the canvas, but the words are the brushstrokes that sell the dream. A masterclass in how a single phrase, said with conviction, can outweigh any spec sheet.
And if you thought that this wouldn’t have me adding in some Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan clips into this newsletter, you are dead wrong.
Thanks for reading. Another round next week
Jackson.
The Drink Cart Friday Shot is your late Friday pick-me-up for pop culture brains and ad junkies. A fast pour of ad insights and hot takes, served like a quick round at your favourite dive bar after a week of client feedback.