THE $395 CELEBRITY MANHATTAN IS NOT A STRATEGY
The only newsletter that opens on Days of Thunder cups and closes on a disgraced president’s ludicrously fancy highball.
In the summer of 1990 Tom Cruise basically did Top Gun but made it NASCAR.
The film is incredibly re-watchable. A supporting cast to die for. You can’t not marvel at the run lawyer turned actor Fred Thompson went on in 1990. He ran an airport, was President of NASCAR and a US Navy Admiral while scolding Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise and Alec Baldwin in one incredible movie summer.
But this is not a newsletter about Days of Thunder and character actors. But the only thing more impressive than Thompson’s summer was that Hardee’s absolutely made the most out of product placement as the brand behind the #18 car that Russ Wheeler drives in the movie.
They parlayed that bit of movie gold into 99 cent die-casts of the cars and an incredible line up of movie souvenir drink cups.
What’s the point? Collector cups aren’t just nostalgia. They are the media.
A 32 oz Days of Thunder cup sat on a kitchen counter for two years, went through the dishwasher 400 times and did more frequency than any media buyer could dream about.
What’s most interesting is that very few movies can pull this off anymore. It’s not a problem with plastic. It’s that every movie in the 90s would crush a 6-8 week run in theatres. But you can’t do cup plans for a movie that’s on streaming within a few weeks. Now we have loyalty apps and rewards points.
Hardee’s got Coke to make you an awesome cheap cup and told you it was more than a cup. A fun kind of premium. Cheap, plastic and you still love it.
THE OTHER KIND OF PREMIUM ALTOGETHER
Then there is Johnnie Walker Blue Label. This is not your father’s 99 cent movie cup.
It’s thirty years of advertising psyops.
Fancy brand ambassadors, luxury silk-lined and art themed boxes, short films with people like Jude Law all designed to get you to buy a $395 bottle of blended scotch.
This year, the job of shilling the Blue Label has landed on Dua Lipa’s husband’s plate.
It does all the things luxury is supposed to do. He’s checked into a hotel suite. He’s poured himself some scotch. Callum Turner is journaling his little heart out by writing the brand tag line, “Keep Walking,” into his diary.
The brand wanted him to hit their every celebration big or small brand platform and he regurgitated this in the press release like he was held at brand gun point, “The ethos of Johnnie Walker Blue Label is one that I’ve always admired. With only one in ten thousand casks ever making it in, that level of care is what sets it apart. Blue Label is the first bottle I reach for when celebrating with my mates, and now to officially be in partnership is a real honour.”
Then he proceeds on social media to use the one in ten thousand casks scotch in a Manhattan. Because the brand is desperate for people to actually just drink this $395 bottle. They don’t want you to keep it, let it collect dust never to buy another. They want you to just drink it.
BLUE DIDN’T START THIS WAY
Johnnie Walker Blue started as an inventory problem and it still is.
In 1987, it was called Johnnie Walker Oldest. They tried to make this a duty-free only special brand during the great Whisky Loch glut.
It’s kind of the funniest part of this brand and incredible marketing. The story of Johnnie Walker Blue is that some of it was made using scotch from now shuttered “ghost distilleries.”
So they took the old scotch nobody wanted and then added the blue label and transformed it into a super premium product that actors like Turner aspired to drink because it feels rich.
So you drop some gold marbling and say almost AI things found in perfume ads like “for those who know what to look for” and it becomes desirable.
Then you can picture Jude Law betting on a yacht drinking it.
And Priyanka Chopra Jonas trying to get you to buy it as a $395 après-ski scotch.
Each time out, the stuff feels both more luxurious and more comically and expensively ordinary. In the immortal words of Admiral Ackbar, it’s a trap. A trap where selling bottles too rare to open is actually bad business.
Sure, you have to spend over 30 years making that argument, but then you have to squeeze everyone who believes it into making it in their home cocktails on a random Tuesday night.
And for marketers, that’s the funnest part of all. You are now spending money to undermine your decades of brand building. I think that’s what you might call, eating your own tail.
PENCILS DOWN
Hardee’s charged you barely 2 bucks and you got a toy movie car, a souvenir cup that was pretty rad and it was filled with Coke and made that feel premium and reminded you of it for years.
Johnnie Walker took some old scotch that no one really wanted, charged you hundreds of dollars making you think you shouldn’t drink it. Then after building up that equity, started telling you it was okay to drink it whenever and mix it with stuff.
Even though they have Johnnie Walker Black that sells for way less and can be perfectly fine if you’re adding red vermouth, a dash of chocolate bitters and a cherry.
And let’s not forget Turner’s Manhattan calls for an absolutely maniacal spec. The recipe wants you to use 1.4 oz of Blue Label and .7 of Italian Vermouth. If anyone gives 1.4 oz as a spec, their cheese has slipped off their cracker or they are making a very Euro-sized milliliter-based cocktail and just converted it into ounces.
Back in the 1960s Johnnie Walker ads asked, “You can’t tell one scotch from another. Or can you?” I guess they answered that one eventutally.
Switching from Super premium to expensive everyday is a wild branding pivot. But I love this one last additional story on the brand.
Former US President Richard Nixon liked to keep Blue Label around in his later years.
He died in 94, so this may have been JW Oldest to start. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he drank it with ginger ale and a twist of lime. The rarest scotch blend made into a highball? He probably was making it in a Hardee’s Days of Thunder Cup too.
I can’t resist a second Nixon story about drinking. At state dinners and the presidential yacht he had the staff pour him 1966 Château Margaux. His favorite wine which he also kept on standby at “21” Club.
But he liked it so much he kept it for himself. He had his team wrap it in a napkin so no one could see the label, then served guests cheaper wine so no one could see the good stuff he was drinking.
Keep in mind it’s been said that before those state dinners he was also 6 Martinis deep before the wine started flowing. Diabolical Nixon behavior. Maybe that’s why Nixon is such an underrated brand icon.
I also can’t help but bring up 2002’s Maid in Manhattan. What one podcast called, “A Nixon Propaganda Rom-Com” This is a film where Jennifer Lopez’s son is on an unreal side-quest to fan boy Richard Nixon. There’s no way this would happen in 2026.
So I’ve probably been too hard on Callum Turner. He’s just following in a long tradition of getting us to drink the fancy stuff no matter what.
COCKTAIL OF THE WEEK: PULLING A NIXON
Using Johnnie Walker in a highball wasn’t a novel invention by Nixon. In 1936 there was an ad whose whole existence was, “Whisky and soda. Scotch and splash. Johnnie Walker, please.”
The brand sold the scotch as the thing to mix with anything. So here’s the move: wrap the bottle in a white napkin. Tell your friends you’ve broken out the Blue Label. Then just pour it with ginger like a complete savage.
2 oz Johnnie Walker Black
4 oz cold ginger ale
Stir with ice and add a twist of lime
Then go yell at whoever is the Kissinger of your friend group. Bonus points if you pull a Bobby Grich. And pour a beer over someone’s head like he did to Nixon in the clubhouse after the Angels won the division in 1979. Maybe don’t do that with the Jonnie Walker Blue.
Remember that Winston Churchill was a Jonnie Walker man and even painted the bottle. If Presidents are drinking it. And Prime Ministers are painting it. You’ve done your job marketers.
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.