The Drink Cart: A Hans Zimmer Christmas

This week, we’re hitting the slopes of the Après Ski Core movement with the Hans Zimmer cranked. We’ve got the perfect winter mix ad stories from past and present.

Dear Drink Carters

If you can’t hear the Hans Zimmer "The Holiday" soundtrack just by looking at our header image, then you’re not sufficiently in the holiday spirit yet. yet. This is Hans Zimmer Christmas season, to all who celebrate! This is your 2024 festive yule log on repeat:

Much like Andrew Lincoln creepily holding up cue cards in Love Actually, we’re here to silently (but dramatically) remind you in Buddy that unmistakable Elf voice, “maybe we could make gingerbread houses, and eat cookie dough, and go ice skating, and—maybe even talk about marketing and ad news.” Or something like that.

So grab yourself a drink from the cart, crank that holiday Zimmer up to 11 and start that fire and read marketing and ad stories about:

• Apres Ski maximalism core, retro ski branding and rad old cigarette content

• A classic Ad History, Bowl Season logo issues and advent calendars problems

• What writing is really like, Scary Google stuff, Classic Holiday ads

• Plus we’ve got more Christmas hats and a random Amaretto Sour.

1. Apres Everything

Seriously, why is everything an Apres Ski Lifestyle right now? Even Rose? This latest Whispering Angel shoot is just the latest bit of apres ski fantasy. They describe it as, “The perfect pairing for a mountain retreat: fresh powder and a glass of the world’s most glamorous rosé.”

It’s not just the rose. Johnny Walker Blue Label has its own Ice Chalet limited edition and a whole outdoor collection. Coco Chanel has it’s own new collection too called Coco Neige. So does Gucci. As does Zara. Lora Piana and even Skimms x North Face. It’s like it unlocks some sort of nostalgic, Instagramable, luxury holiday lifestyle in our lizard brains. What are we even calling this? Apres Core? Alpine Lusting? Chaletcore. Winter Wonderland Maxing? Apres Maximalism?

2. Extreme Branding

See what I mean about the ski nostalgia. I added some items to my of favourite posters, eBay Jackets & Hats, who unearthed this wild Camel cigarette 1984 Speed Skiing branding. I then found the headband and the shirt to complete the entire Camel Ski Collection as well as the ad. The vibes were incredible.

3. You’ll never taste luxury like this ever again

All that nostalgia and just the taste of old cigarettes (Smoking Through the Holidays: 20 Vintage Cigarette Christmas Ads That Aged Like A Fine Wine) made me think fondly over one tradition I hadn’t thought about for a while.

As I was curating a bunch of vintage cigarette Christmas ads for X, I was reminiscing about some late 90's Christmas Eve's at my folks place. They would always have a special pack of Nat Sherman's Fantasias - the insanely cool cigarette's inspired by the company matriarch, Lautia Sherman featuring a gold filter tip and an array of five bright colours. This is how you smoke!

Here’s the kicker. Neither of my parents smoked, but they sure were proud to share some novelty Christmas Eve Fantasia's (and even some rarer Black & Gold variations) with my motley crew of friends and coworkers from The Keg. The downside was with those and a few cigars, Christmas morning smelled like an ashtray. Worth it.

But there’s a problem. Not only are Fantasia's gone forever, but so is Nat Sherman's. I had no idea the iconic brand and their incredible store on 42nd Street, off Fifth Avenue didn't make through the pandemic after a sell off of assets. What a total bummer. As you get older life becomes a series of things that cease to exist while nostalgia catches you on a daily basis.

In a story from The Lamp on one intrepid smoker's tale of hoarding some Nat Shermans after the brand ended."I only succeeded in the opposite: every drag of those Shermans was a pungent reminder of decay, until the last gasp of acrid exhaust dissolved into the air." I would give anything for a carton of those Fantasia’s to share at our holiday party later tonight.

4. Ad History: Mobil car drop

This Mobil demonstration ad from 1966 is still so freaking good. They dropped the car off a 10-story building with a script that would wild by today’s standards, "Our business is to sell you gasoline and oil and we want you to be around to try them. We want you to live."

What’s really intersting is this quote from a story from one of the creators, Len Sirowitz (and seriously, click that link and look at all the work - some incredible stuff).

“The amount of letters received from the public on this campaign are phenomenal. Mobil had to set up 8 secretaries to handle all the mail coming in. There were 10,000 letters the first week alone, congratulating Mobil for their interest in the public interest. Many of the letters included torn-up credit cards from competing oil companies with requests for Mobil credit cards to be sent to them. Newspapers called us and asked if they could run the ads for free. Editorials quoted the ads. Life Magazine did a feature article on the Mobil television commercials. We knew we had hit on something important. Again we learned — give the reader something he’s interested in…and he’ll be interested in you.”

5. Beating Advent Calendars to Death

Advent calendars have officially jumped the shark. I’ve played my part in this, as a frequent buyer and distributor of the infamous Bonne Maman Jam Advent calendar. What started as a charming holiday tradition has been beaten into an over-commercialized frenzy by brands slapping tiny doors on everything from socks to hot sauce.

I sound like Lucy in Charlie Brown Christmas, “Look, Charlie, let's face it. We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket. It's run by a big eastern syndicate, you know.”

Leave it to marketers to turn a nice tradition about anticipation into a shameless, over done, cash grab masquerading as holiday cheer. The sheer volume of advent calendars flooding the market is staggering. The Bearded Man Co's 24 Days of Beard Treats Advent Calendar. Koka's Instant Noodles 12 Days Christmas Countdown. Ilchester's Cheese Advent Calendar.

Fact: Advent calendars have just gone too far.

6. Bowled Over by Branding

This year’s line up of College Football bowl game logos are on branding overload. Think more corporate billboard than iconic sports design - in some cased you can only see the sponsor and not the original name at all. Just look at the new Snoop Dogg take over of the Arizona Bowl. There are three things going on here.

They are packed with sponsor names and chaotic visuals, blurring into a cluttered mess that screams "ad dollars first, football second." And there is more, I used to love what Major League Baseball did with their “Winter Meeting” logos but this year, they are continuing a full-boring roll out.

The evolution of the MLB Winter Meetings logo reflects a shift from highly stylized, location-specific designs to a more generic, streamlined approach. The current logo, while clean and modern, lacks any personality and charm of the past iterations

7. Relatable agency copywriter content

I feel so seen. This excerpt from Franz Kafka’s diary feels like he is writing about the inner world of ad agency copywriters. Days of relentlessly pursuing headlines, punctuated by long periods of self-doubt and days where ideas simply won’t come easily.

It’s a reminder that even the greats struggled, and the magic of impactful copy sometimes emerges after moments of nothingness.If you’re a writer, and especially if you are agency copywriter (and especially as we push towards Christmas), this all checks out.

8. Not now Google

I don’t even know what to make of this. Buried in whatever comms this X post from the Google CEO is the fact that they have been about to solve computational problems in under 5 minutes, that would have previously taken leading supercomputer 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years to solve.

And maybe, kinda sort of they, “casually threw into their release that it proves we’re likely living in a multiverse.” Oh great. So i’m guessing this means my asks of AI are going to get super powered real soon. Even the crypto bros are worried that this means that someday soon even those won’t be hackable.

9. Classic holiday Ad

I love that this ad for seasonal McDonalds included both “sleighful of fun” and “Ho-ho-ho-host” of treats. Both in one piece of creative. Cool it down copywriter! Side note, it has the Eggnog Milkshake which is an all-timer as well as orange sauce for the McNuggets? Wowza.

10. Hat of the week: Gingerbread-scented Icing Gingerbread Man Cap

Yep. If you’ve been following me on Linkedin, I shared this hat with you last year. Or if you were the guys from Pittsburg I met at the pool bar at a destination wedding in Mexico and I made you smell my hat and we instantly became best friends, well great.

But this is just a classic hat, you can still pick out and if Canada Post was working maybe even get, and i just pulled it out of storage and it still smells like great ginger bread even after a lot of innings thrown last year. Get yours from Baseballism.

Last call: The Drink Cart Amaretto Sour

In agency land, we’re reaching that critical sprint to the end of the year - we did holiday campaigns back in the summer, so it’s a wonderful time pushing out the last few campaigns of the year.

A cocktail that will give you some warm almond notes and that citrusy tang that makes an instant cozy winter gathering vibe. And this will come as no surprise, the origins of the drink are murky at best. It’s like Nate Bargatze doing George Washington on SNL.

Washington: “I dream that one day, our great nation will have a drink that is not a whiskey sour, and not a brandy sour, made with a Sweet Italian liquor.”

Soldier: “And where did this drink come from sir?”

Washington: “Nobody knows.”

Cheeky random pre-holiday Amaretto Sour:

• 1 1/2 oz Amaretto

• ¾ oz simple syrup

• ¾ oz fresh lemon juice (just do a whole lemon)

• 1 orange slice, for garnish

If you’re having your holiday Christmas party, like maybe certain writers of this very newsletter are tonight, take a few pages out of old Dean Martin and get into a Marshmallow World with your sour.

---

Drop me a comment below, ask me a question or give me a reco. Or just tell me how your cocktail turned out.

The Drink Cart is a weekly newsletter of advertising, pop culture, baseball and cocktails from Jackson Murphy.