Fog Machines Are Completely Underrated.
The only ad newsletter where a hedge knight with no money and a fog machine is the creative hero of the week.
Dear Drink Carters and anyone currently placing bets on how many cars pass through a traffic light in Watertown, Massachusetts.
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiitttttt.” Given how much time I spend working and thinking about gambling, I probably should’ve bet on gambling being my choice for this week’s newsletter.
It’s true. I read about how DraftKings and FanDuel stocks cratering last week despite DraftKings posting their first ever profitable year. The reason? Newer, sexier, even more ridiculous betting prediction market upstarts eating their future lunch profits. Those players, Kalshi and Polymarket, literally spent the last two weeks, I kid you not, running competing free grocery store stunts in Manhattan. Get it?
Factor in that a streamer won $363,000 betting on how many cars would pass through a traffic light before it turned red, you can see that even betting is being upended in major ways. The game uses AI to count cars on live CCTV. He called it “addiction unlocked.” Which even for gambling, is both the worst and most honest tagline of the year. Or that you can “bet” on what comes first. Jesus returning to earth this year, or the Lakers being in the NBA Finals. It’s baffling.
I remember of course, It’s just February 18th. This year is going to be long, isn’t it? I bring this up because this week is really about what happens when the cost of making something drops to almost nothing.
Last week ByteDance dropped Seedance 2.0 and the internet promptly lost its mind. Within hours users were generating near-frame-perfect recreations of copyrighted everything. Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise. Shot-for-shot remakes of the most expensive sequences in F1, all for nine cents of compute power. All while proclaiming Hollywood is over now.
Cease-and-desists dropped from Disney, Paramount as SAG-AFTRA called it “blatant infringement,” saying the video generator “disregards law, ethics, industry standards and basic principles of consent. ByteDance offered to “strengthen current safeguards,” which is really just fun corporate speak for “we’ll add some filters and hope you move on.” People are calling it Hollywood’s DeepSeek moment. Remember DeepSeek? Or Sora? Things are moving so fast now it’s hard to keep up. The whole crustacean themed AI agent story was just in January.
So while Disney was firing off legal threats to ByteDance (probably somehow aided by AI), it’s also sitting on its own $1 billion investment in OpenAI and a three-year licensing deal to let Sora generate videos using 200+ Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters. Same company. Same month. The message isn’t subtle: if you’re going to use our IP, you’d better pay for it. This is the licensing playbook that’s going to define the next decade of entertainment.
Contrast that with the fifth episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms aired this week and solved its biggest problem with lower budgets and fog. There’s no shortage to the power of a good fog machine.
Actual, real fog used to conceal the fact that this show costs less than $10 million per episode (which is still an absurd amount). Half of the House of the Dragon. Way less than late-era Thrones.
Creator Ira Parker told CBR they exaggerated the fog to hide the lack of a crowd. Used helmet-POV shots to keep the camera inside Dunk’s visor. The result is a 10-minute battle that’s simultaneously a budget workaround and the best fight this franchise has produced in years. The episode has hit 9.8 on IMDb. Tied with Hardhome.
Yes, AI can generate a Brad Pitt fistfight for pennies. But Knight made the limitation the point, it IS the storytelling linchpin. Dunk isn’t surveying a battlefield. He’s barely conscious. Its mud and steel and primal survival instinct. The constraint forced creativity and a scene that’s more intimate and more brutal than any amount of spectacle could be.
My feed, three days later, is still dropping incredible remixes like this. Leaving the audience blind to what’s happening elsewhere is what makes the ending (no spoilers) land with such a gut punch.
Seedance demos are impressive the way a perfectly rendered stock photo is impressive. The way I can instruct AI to make ridiculous Disney Cocktail Animated Movie posters. They prove the floor is rising. But the ceiling? The ceiling is still better served by fog and a guy in a helmet who can barely stand.
The cost of making something is approaching zero. That’s true for video, for betting markets, for content, for pretty much everything except the delicious bourbon we all want more of. You can recreate credible Hollywood sequences for pennies. You can bet on traffic lights. Or Jesus’ return. A gambling company can open a free grocery store faster than Zohran Mamdani could ever imagine and call it community outreach cosplaying as a stunt.
But the question was never about cost. It has always and will continue to be about taste. Imagine my surprise when people are actually fighting about if taste is a new core skill or not. As R/GA’s wonderful X noted, “If taste is a new core skill, why are we talking about it here?” A skill about knowing what to show and what to hide. About choosing fog over phony over-the-top slop. It’s not a new skill, just a very valuable one when costs to creativity plummet. Watching the same AI and Linkedin grifters “discover it” is a blessing for my feed.
The machines are getting cheaper. The question is whether anyone’s getting better. Technically the real question was also answered this week when a judge dismissed a lawsuit affirming our sacred right to continue to call chicken nuggets “boneless wings.” But that’s for another tale of the realm.
Drink Cart Approved™ agency discussion topics
The branding and logos of Pennsylvania railroads are probably better than anything you’ve ever created.
As a confirmed Hallmark fan, this AI powered publishing slop empire running six figures of revenue on books like Snowstorms & Schnapps, Bridesmaid & Bourbon and Tumbleweeds & Tequila is absolutely wild
When the bars are offering up nights to connect with AI chatbots, I think we should be worried.
I’m comforted by the fact that Twisted Tea is now just offering up 40s of Sweet Tea Whiskey now.
This Just In: Mini OOH Billboards Absolutely Rock.
Can you imagine pulling these out during a presentation after landing that banger headline of Ineggspensive? The clients must have been stoked. (Via Consumer Time Capsule)
Remembering Robert Duvall.
Robert Duvall died last Saturday at 95. One of the greatest actors to ever do it, who rarely bothered to do ads. One of the only ads he ever really did was a DirecTV spot in 2004 where he reads customer service fan letters. So simple. So good.
PS If you didn’t want a Master Card after this 1986 spot you are dead inside.
Last Call: The Fog Cutter
Trader Vic invented this cocktail in 1947 and the name alone would’ve been enough to make the cut this week.
But it’s rum, gin and brandy all in the same glass, which sounds like a disaster. The citrus and orgeat keep it honest. A sherry float on top acts like, well, fog. Everything thrown in, nothing wasted, works because someone knew what to balance and what to hide. The whole thesis of this week’s newsletter in a glass. Did this just all magically tie together?
2 oz white rum
1 oz brandy
½ oz gin
2 oz orange juice
1 oz lemon juice
½ oz orgeat
½ oz cream sherry (floated on top)
Shake everything except the sherry with ice. Strain into a tall glass over fresh ice. Float the sherry on top. Don’t stir it in. The fog stays on top. That’s the point.
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.
Love that cute lil Mc Donald’s billboard!