Most Interesting Ad Newsletter in the World?

The only ad newsletter that doesn't need AI or even Dos Equis to be interesting.

Dear marketing fans and anyone wondering if we're all just staying thirsty and making the same ad now.

Meta just laid off another 1,500 people from Reality Labs. That’s the Metaverse division—the one Zuckerberg was so convinced about that he renamed the entire company after it. Now they’re pivoting to AI and pretending the last four years didn’t happen at all. Just like people are pretending that the new Star Trek show isn’t hot garbage.

I was thinking how quickly a trend can completely turn on you like Zuckerberg’s Metaverse play. How things can change. Ask people who throw around terms like “rules based order” or Greenland. Things change.

When you read tales where maybe OpenAI is projected to lose $14 billion this year and may run out of money by 2027. When you consider that, according to Forbes, they “Could Be Blowing As Much As $15 Million Per Day On Silly Sora Videos” it starts to make sense why they are so hell bent on adding ads to ChatGPT. All while Google is laughing that while they started slow, their $74 billion in quarterly revenue is a cushion that start ups do not have. Things can change.

When Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella is telling you that the AI boom might falter if we don’t get more people using AI or if we don’t do something useful with electricity or we won’t have the social permission to burn electricity on it. His explanation that AI should be thought of as the “scaffolding for human potential” comes as he also tells us that we should stop arguing about the slop content that is clogging every single social platform. Things can change.

The ground keeps shifting. Zuckerberg bet billions on the Metaverse being the future. Sam Altman, Google, Microsoft, Musk are all betting on AI as the future. While I can’t see a world where AI goes the way of the Metaverse and the Dodo, I can see a sharp case for pushback and hedging bets.

Take this ad I saw on an actual television screen. Maybe it was because I was in the deep suburbia of Ontario for the weekend. But a kid in a fake moustache and sombrero saying "67" to sell spicy chicken burritos for $6.67 tells you everything you need to know about the economy, the state of advertising and the alluring siren call of AI. In fact it's so bad (and not just in a local ad type of way), it'll make you root for AI to take over all of advertising faster than you can say "ole”.

Marty Supreme’s nemesis Kevin O'Leary is right there to explain how great it is when you go from spending $400k on ads to spending $9k using AI. That certainly would have been money well spent on the burrito business. The catch is you have to fly to a studio in Dubai presumably with Kevin O’Leary talking in your ear about AI the whole time. No thank you.

That’s not a flex, or a nightmare, that’s a flood warning. Some brands are threading the needle and hedging their bets as, three in four marketers are worried AI-generated creative is making everyone look the same, and 86% have already seen AI outputs that look like their competitors’. It’s why Gap just hired a Paramount exec to be their first-ever Chief Entertainment Officer. They’re calling it “fashiontainment” which is comically cringe, but they’re investing in content again. In storytelling. In people. A hedge against more AI.

I honestly can’t believe that we are going back to branded content. Something we’ve tried in at least three waves since I started in this business. That your brand, whatever it is, is in the content business. Every single time we respond by saying, I don’t want my refrigerator to make content. I want it to keep my food cold.

Then, like a vision, the Most Interesting Man in the World returned. Dos Equis brought him back after a decade. The same actor, the same “Stay thirsty, my friends.” He’d been living in the suburbs eating plain yogurt. Then he found a Dos Equis in the back of his fridge and snapped out of it. That's all it took?

In a world of AI-generated ads and kids in sombreros screaming 67, can the most interesting man save advertising? To answer that, it’s worth watching this speech from a screenplay seminar scene in 2002’s Adaptation for this very moment we find ourselves in. It’s not about AI, or even creativity per se. But it is a good reminder about what truly drives human experiences. At least Dos Equis will still be around in 2027. Maybe we can talk in a pub in Greenland over a cold one. Remember, things change. They always do.

Drink Cart Approved™ agency discussion topics

• I love this bit on real vs fake luxury.

• What do we think about Matcha liqueur?

• She makes a compelling case about Jar Jar Binksism.

• Topps does a lot of heavy lifting to send up Bo Jackson’s Bo Knows with Dan Marino. Fun.

• A very deep dive into Tom Brady’s Instagram. Fascinating.

• Its a very happy anniversary to the famous I’ve Fallen and I can’t get up ad. And Dawson’s Creek premiered 28 years ago this week.

Modern Day Jingle Story

This is how branding and social media is supposed to work. A real life person @romeosshow proposes a banger of a theme song for Dr. Pepper just before Christmas. Cut to the brand put the jingle in an ad during the 2026 College Football Playoff National Championship. That’s how you do it. Advertising and branding doesn’t have to be hard. It just has to be smart.

Australian Lamb Just Gets It.

Australia dropped to 11th on the World Happiness Index. Droga5’s response? A guy grilling lamb chops at his desk. That’s the only part of the argument I’m thinking about. And honestly, it’s airtight.

Last call: The Champagne Cocktail

Two of these on New Year’s Eve with some of my favourite people. That’s all it took. I’ve been thinking about them ever since. Not just the friends. The drinks. To be fair I’m also thinking still about the thick cuts of mortadella that was in honour of Colombian New Years.

The champagne cocktail is basically the oldest cocktail we know of. First documented in 1855, when some guy in Panama called it “the most delicious thing in the world” and then immediately had one before breakfast. (Different era. No judgment. Just Respect. Must have been an ad man.)

The original recipe was simple: sugar cube, bitters, champagne. That’s it. No brandy. The cognac showed up later, around 1937, and nobody’s entirely sure why, but it stuck. Sometimes the best traditions start as accidents. Adding cognac to anything is worth it .

Then last night I put on Romance on the High Seas. This was Doris Day’s first film, 1948. I always think of one of my first landladies, Phyllis, she ran one of my favourite places to live with the iron fist of a low rent Stalinist dictator. God I loved that place. But if you ever cracked open that tough exterior, she would talk about her obsession with Doris Day.

So here I was. Watching her very first scenes on camera years later and there they were. Champagne cocktails in a smoke-filled nightclub, looking like the most glamorous thing anyone’s ever held. And suddenly I’m bummed I haven’t had one since December.

It really is the perfect way to celebrate anything. In agency land, that could be your AI not pissing you off (No shade, Claude). Winning a new piece of business. Or just surviving another long slog of a week.

Sugar cube. Bitters. Bubbles. Most certainly some cognac ‘cause you’re feeling fancy. Here’s to whatever’s worth celebrating this week.

The Classic Champagne Cocktail:

• 1 sugar cube

• 2–3 dashes Angostura bitters

• 1/2 oz (15ml) cognac or brandy (optional but now traditional)

• Chilled brut champagne or sparkling wine

• Drink

Worth also sharing how wonderful the opening credits are. They do not make them like this anymore. But they should.