The internet really has a full plate. The brands are doing everything to distract us. The outrage boom-bust cycle is having trouble keeping up.
KFC launched a cereal in the UK that you’re supposed to pour gravy on.
In Canada Kraft Dinner dropped a cream soda that tastes like mac and cheese. The tagline is something AI would do on the free plan: “Drink outside the box.”
And then Denny’s Canada launched a new pasta line up including a “Breakfast Spaghettini” that features a heart shaped egg on top.
Then Hidden Valley entered the chat. They dropped a glow-in-the-dark bottle with Walmart that from what I can tell is black ranch dressing.
All of these were some sort of coordinated brand Patriot missile system that helped soften the blow for the biggest outrages. But there were more.
LeBron James in an almost cynical deal is taking money from prediction market site Polymarket. That deal is a reported $15 million a year. His basketball team is only paying him $3.9 million. He’s selling sports picks during football season.
Converse accidentally sucked all the oxygen out of the room in an ad with aespa’s Karina that the internet believed was a coded KKK hood and a potential lynching.
Kylie Jenner published a Saint Tropez vlog that had people screaming about Marie Antoinette and letting them eat cake.
And if you haven’t read The Boston Globe story about the lesbian bar in Greenfield, Massachusetts that made masks optional one night a week, clear your weekend.
So I can forgive everyone for missing Ari Gold and Vinny Chase in a gambling ad for a Paul brother.
ARI GOLD WORKS FOR JAKE PAUL NOW
Three minutes?
Yes, for three-plus minutes, Jeremy Piven pulls up to a Miami mansion and lays on the Ari Gold character thicker than I thought humanly possible to the bouncer and a series of other pseudo famous faces.
After an awkward exchange with Jake Paul who is spouting his betting app’s track record and stats, Piven eventually finds Adrian Grenier on a yacht.
He pitches him a movie. As a crooked jewel thief. Grenier says he’s done with movies.
He wants something better. And the better turns out to be Betr. Yep, Jake Paul’s gambling app. See what they did there?
Piven sells Grenier to Paul as the new face of the brand, then leans over and says the quiet part out loud: now we negotiate, we’re going to take all his money.
That’s it. That’s the whole ad.
Two guys from a show about Hollywood excess are reunited to sell sports betting for the guy who boxed a 58-year-old Mike Tyson. All without ever mentioning their characters.
And who’s mad?
HBO’s mad. Not about the gambling. About the boat and its former actors cosplaying as their IP.
Their cease and desist says the clothes, the dialogue and the whole vibe are too Entourage.
Awkward problem. When HBO got sued over Ballers, it told a judge that Miami, parties, boats and flashy cars belong to everybody. And won. Now the network wants the boats back.
Entourage creator Doug Ellin’s mad too. He called the ad trash and theft, told Piven to go flip burgers if he needs cash. He said he had to beg Piven to do the show in the first place. He’s just mad he didn’t get to make the spot.
Betr thanked him for all the free promo, claiming nearly 10 million views on day one.
But where was the internet rage?
They ripped Sydney Sweeney a new one over her exploitative ad, but this crass stolen valour of Entourage for a Paul brother’s gambling app? Not a peep.
Nobody is mad that either one is selling gambling.
One prediction app took Sydney Sweeney’s clothes off and put her on a billboard in Times Square and everyone is mad.
One prediction app backed a money truck up to LeBron and he started making amateur-hour picks for football season. A few people grumbled while Pete Rose rolled over in his grave.
Then betting app obviously ripped off an HBO show, and the only people mad about it were HBO’s lawyers.
Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that DraftKings built a machine-learning model in 2023 to figure out which customers would lose the most after getting a free bet. Internally it was called an elasticity score. According to the Times, roughly $400 million in AI-automated promotions went out last year. People were more mad at Sweeney. DraftKings denied they were doing anything wrong.
Kalshi at least did something interesting with Marshawn Lynch going into literal Beast Mode shot in 35mm. We don’t need art house gambling spots or the equivalent of Christopher Nolan prestige gambling cinema.
That’s kind of why prediction markets went from 1% of legal U.S. sports betting to 16% in three years. It’s a land grab. Celebrities are just the fence posts.
PETE ROSE REALLY WAS JUST TOO EARLY
Pete Rose would have loved to be LeBron.
Before he was baseball’s most famous gambler, Pete Rose was its hardest-working pitchman.
In the ‘70s and ‘80s he sold everything. Aqua Velva, Kool-Aid, Hungry Man, Grecian Formula, Milk Duds, Wheaties. Jockey underwear.
Can you believe this 1977 two-page spread of him in briefs next to Jim Palmer and seven other athletes. No one talked about how this degraded the sport. Probably because Rose could sell the hell out of Colour TVs.
The best one is from 1976 for Aqua Velva. Rose in a barbershop quartet, in a big league stadium, harmonizing about aftershave. LeBron could never.
In 1989 the Dowd Report found Rose bet on 52 Reds games in 1987, at least $10,000 a day. He was banned for life.
Denied it for 15 years. Admitted it in 2004.
He got a lifetime ban for basically doing what LeBron now gets $15 million a year to post about.
PENCILS DOWN
We’ve gotten really good at reading ads. Frame by frame. A skirt, a pair of sneakers and an HBO rip-off.
We’ve gotten worse at reading business models.
A publicly traded company built an AI that ranks people by how much they’ll lose and the internet gave it a mild shrug. A three-minute spot where Jake Paul buys two actors like a lot at an estate sale got flagged for copyright. The only formal objection to the Betr ad came from a cable company protecting its use of boats.
The brands have figured this out. Betr thanked the guy who called its ad garbage. Novig had Sydney on a Times Square billboard the same week the entire sports world was yelling at her. Outrage is attention and attention is the product.
You can’t screenshot the algorithm.
COCKTAIL OF THE WEEK: BETWEEN THE SHEETS
Shocker. Everyone is still outraged about Sydney Sweeney and nobody knows who invented the Between the Sheets cocktail.
The safe bet is Harry MacElhone at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris, sometime around the 1930s. That’s the answer 90% of the time. Harry’s gets credit for the Bloody Mary, the White Lady and the Old Pal, so it’s a reasonable guess.
But the Berkeley hotel claims it around 1921, a decade before Paris, supposedly from a manager whose name has come down to us only as Mr. Polly.
But mostly people say it started in French brothels, poured as an aperitif for the women working there before the night got going. There’s no proof. There never is.
You don't name a Sidecar with rum in it Between the Sheets by accident.
Between the Sheets
1 oz cognac
1 oz white rum
3/4 oz Cointreau
3/4 oz fresh lemon juice
Lemon peel
Shake with ice and strain into a chilled coupe. Express the lemon peel over the top. Any decent brandy works if you don’t have cognac, and triple sec will do in place of Cointreau.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. The same way I always wanted to end a newsletter with, I am Queens Boulevard. And you can definitely find a Pete Rose Gold Star Chili ad that features, “Dem Dogs Are Good” as the headline and rather misleading coupon. Where’s Johnny Drama when you need him?
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.
Spooky Ranch took it too far.