EVERYBODY’S BUILDING STUPID
A Friday newsletter that wants double down on the dumbest ideas in the room.
Before we get into the equivalent of Shark Week, but for amazingly stupid ideas we love. Then this corner of the feed shows up.
Yep, you got it, young people filming their solo nights in. Empty apartment, dinner for one, TV and one of the bigger ones, Lana Isa, is right here in the GTA.
Influence used to be about what you want to have. The Birkin, the Bali trip, the perfect husband. This is the opposite. The entire brand is what’s missing. No friends, no plans, no Friday.
The detail that got me is the wineglass. She drinks sugar-free soda out of one to make a regular Tuesday feel special.
That’s not sad. Well it is. But it’s also branding.
Full disclosure, I’ve been booking influencers for my clients. Last three months alone I’ve dealt with a pile of them and they sort into three buckets.
The amazing ones. Rare, sharp, turn it around faster than our agency does and make the work better. You’d sign them again tomorrow.
The ghosts. Loved the brief, super interested, then vanished into the group chat never to be seen again. You’re sitting there refreshing a DM like you got dumped.
The rate-card inflationists. Quoting you Birkin money for a single god damned reel with a straight-face. For one video. It’s insane. It’s not sustainable at all.
So seeing this corner of the feed shows up. Broke, alone, filming their little diet soda in their stupid wineglasses. It’s the most honest content any of them are making. Just a girl admitting Friday’s empty and turning it into a brand anyway.
She took the dumbest little ritual she had and made people want it. Which, weirdly, is exactly what four brands tried to pull off this week.
POOPSICLES ARE REAL. AND THEY’RE WINNING
DUDE Wipes threw a “Poopsicle Party” at Sam’s Club. Yes, they dropped ice-pop-scented flushable wipes, stacked to the rafters. And they play it completely straight, like a wipe that smells like a popsicle is a perfectly normal thing.
Remember, this is a brand that started as a literal bit. Wet wipes for grown men, pitched on Shark Tank. Ten years later the bit is a real company sitting on pallets in every warehouse club in America. That’s the whole DUDE thesis.
The DUDE economy runs on committing to the dumbest joke possible, long enough and it becomes a viable business.
And the wipe was never the flex. Getting Sam’s Club to sell eight-foot-high pallets of POOPSICLE is the flex.
143K people looked at flushable wipes because of it.
FIREBALL’S WEARABLE DAD GUT
If you thought ice-pop-scented flushable wipes and the Rib Flute were wild, imagine a fanny pack of a hairy beer belly, Fireball tattooed around the navel, holding 35 shots with a spout built in.
Genuinely revolting.
I’m in love with it.
The object would’ve been enough. But they wrapped it in a Sarah McLachlan animal-rescue PSA and sad piano, save the endangered dad bod, two Southern Charm stars selling the heartbreak.
They didn’t just make a dumb thing. They handed you a format your body already knows how to feel something about. You can’t not get the joke.
Then they actually sold it. $24.99 on Flaviar, two drops, first 200 orders get an “I ❤️ Dad Bods” bumper sticker. Dropped right before Father’s Day, because of course it did.
So the fanny pack is the thing you buy, the PSA is the thing that makes you laugh, and the 35 shots inside are basically a dare to film yourself wearing it. Not quite a Rib Flute, but the novelty of two Bravo stars is a good kicker.
MILLER HIGH LIFE WELDED A BAR TO A JUKEBOX
This is the JukeKeg. A real Crosley jukebox with a working tap built in.
Five feet of dive bar you can put in your garage. Only one exists, and they auctioned it on eBay starting at $1.23 (a wink at 123 years) with every dollar going to Wisconsin musicians.
This is not a random charity bolted onto a stunt. It’s an extension of their “Soundtrack to the High Life” music platform, so the jukebox-for-musicians line is the real deal.
They even toss the winner a $150 gift card to fill it.
Everything else this week is going for a quick laugh. This one’s stupid with something warmer tossed in.
The Champagne of Beers knows precisely what it is, and it’s not too proud to be a jukebox that pours brewskis.
AND THEN COKE SHOWED EVERYONE UP
Coke and Ogilvy turned the contour bottle into chopsticks. Functional ones, food-grade steel, engineered down to where your fingers go.
The insight is the whole game. In a lot of Southeast Asia the bottle never makes it to the dinner table, but the chopsticks always do — so instead of muscling in as a bottle, Coke just became the thing already there.
Then they did the part nobody else this week had the nerve for. They took the logo off. Just the iconic silhouette and the red.
That bottle was designed back in 1915 to be recognizable in the dark, or shattered on the ground. Over a hundred and ten years later it’s recognizable as a pair of chopsticks.
It only works because the brand’s been banking that shape for a century.
The first three are built to win the internet through screenshots, quote tweets and views. This one’s only built to win an awards jury.
THE AD LESSON
Everybody’s making objects instead of ads now, so the real question is how you spot the good ones. For me it comes down to how stupid it is and how far you take it.
Two days ago I sat here and called Chili’s dressing a baby back rib up as a flute the Universal Theory of Advertising: stupidity times conviction. A dumb idea, fully committed, real money behind it, zero irony — beats earnest every single time.
I figured that was a one-off but then I got this note from Matt Sorrell one of the geniuses behind the Rib Flute, “Thank you for reaching into my soul and describing what ridiculous convictions I've based my career around.” And then he shared the sketch of the flute. Incredible.
So that’s how this officially became stupid week on The Drink Cart, and I’m not mad about it.
DUDE Wipes and Fireball are pure stupidity, all the way to eleven, and they never blink. A popsicle-scented wipe on a pallet is levels of unimaginable dumb. A wearable gut you pour cinnamon whisky shots out of? Now we’re talking. That’s why they work.
Miller takes the stupidity down a notch and trades it for some heart — a jukebox that pours beers and gives back. They went all the way. Coke takes the stupidity all the way down to zero — elegant, restrained, over a century of brand equity and the thing still works.
You can dial the stupidity all the way down, but the commitment has to be total or the whole thing falls apart.
That’s the test. How stupid is the idea, and how far are you willing to ride it.
The brands that won this week all rode it to the end and never once let on that they knew it was ridiculous. The ones that lose are the brands running the same stunt with an eyebrow raised, hedging, praying you know that they know it’s silly.
COCKTAIL OF THE WEEK: FIREBALL DR. PEPPER
Of course it’s Fireball. For god’s sake they made a dad bod fanny pack, somebody’s got to drink all this stuff.
Just like the fanny pack. Cinnamon whisky and Dr Pepper have no business together, and the second they hit ice they taste like a melted candy you’d actually pay for.
1.5 oz Fireball
Top with Dr Pepper over ice.
That’s the whole recipe.
Root beer works too if you want to feel like a kid who made a terrible decision. Stupidity times conviction, in a glass.
Pour one, drink it out of a wineglass to make a regular Friday feel special, film it. Congratulations, you’re an influencer now.
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.