The Drink Cart: Chalamets

We're going full Chalamet to kick us off. Plus Zoolander and perfume ad references, baguette scratch and sniffs, weird coffee, jet give aways, very old ads and hats and the story of the Manhattan.

This drink contraption and vintage illustration style was inspired by Nick St. Pierre who shared the cool Midjourney style reference.

Today’s “newsletter” is action packed:

• Batting lead off: the new Martin Scorsese fragrance ad with Chalamet.

• Speaking of scents, you gotta see these French stamps.

• Sport coffee, Fighter Jets, Taylor Swift theories, Instagram Grids like it is 2011, and some Japanese baseball content.

• And some ads found in an old magazine from 65 years ago.

1. Scorsese x Chalamet

If I was Leonardo Dicaprio I’d be worried that my director found his new muse. Even the description is hilarious, but the internet is pretty pumped about this ad. “An actor’s conflict between celebrity and staying true to himself. A dialogue between Timothée Chalamet’s artistic sensibility and Martin Scorsese’s virtuosity.”

Fragrance ads are the purest form of ads in the world. And watching this reminded me about one of my favourite Twitter accounts, Perfume Ads For Sale. They haven’t posted in a while. But their perfume ads always cracked me up. Like this one:

David Beckham rides towards camera on a generous horse: ‘Will you still love me tomorrow?’

He enters a castle in a kimono, strokes a heron at midnight, looks through some vintage binoculars, Ball dances with his uncle.

“Say you will”

Carefully, he places a flute onto some bread.

And fake perfume ads remind me of Zoolander and the wonderful line, “Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.” Profound.

2. Baguette Stamps

Speaking of scents. This one floors me. Our postal service lost $748 million last year. France’s is out here making scratch and sniff stamps of fresh baked baguettes.

3. What in the heck is “sport coffee”?

Patrick Mahomes is bringing us the heavily trademarked performance coffee, Throne Sport Coffee. It’s a canned coffee with natural caffeine and electrolytes. As the great people of Idiocracy once proclaimed, “It’s got what plants crave!”

For me it is that they have trademarked the following things: Sport Coffee, Coffee Plus+, “Ready. Drink. Go.”, “Get Going. Keep Going.” That’s a lot of trademarks. Yeah, i’m not sure I need a functional Salted Caramel heavily caffeinated canned coffee.

4. Giving away a real Jet

Giving away a jet in a promotion is like cooking risotto on Top Chef. Not a great strategy. Pepsi even got the Netflix documentary in 2022 when they tried it. Ever watch Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?

So it’s natural that Liquid Death is going to give one away. The brand is serving up a real L-39 jet with copy that would have been so fun to write: “Yes. This summer, Liquid Death is doing something no other beverage company has done in the history of the human race: giving away an actual 2-seater aircraft that goes almost 470 mph with nearly 3,800 lbs of thrust. Yes. This is a real jet that will come with a valid and effective FAA special certification of airworthiness. (Pilot not included.)”

And I rarely say this, but even the FAQs are fun. Not only is Liquid Death poking the bear that is big soda, they are also poking online retailers like Amazon - the contest is only about what you buy at actual real world retail.

A trip down memory lane in the May 1959 issue of National Geographic

5. Reading a May 1959 National Geographic, just for the ads

Our building has this quirky spot where people leave books for anyone. I’m always snooping what everyone is reading. But recently someone left a few old National Geographic mags out. I took the top one from May 1959. It’s a 65-year old magazine featuring a story about Normandy just 15 years after D-Day. But it was the ads that really were worth it. Tell me you don’t want to hit Florida up with some old-timey Travelers Cheques. You wouldn’t understand kids.

I liked these two. The super simple General Dynamics ad screaming, we’re a company in tech going to space with some wires and that’s all they have to say. Then we have this great Bell & Howard camera ad. The great photo paired with the unforgettable “The ‘whirr’ tells you…” line and the story of what that sound means. It’s beautiful. And nice to see Bell & Howard is still going strong 117 years now at least as a brand.

The other two that kind of grabbed my eye was first seeing future President Ronald Reagan pushing the absolute heck out of the railroad and the Domeliner. There’s no way you could get a celebrity or influencer to go this hard today. And lastly this Cunard ad does everything it can to tell the story of the spoon making the now-decades-old school Crepes Suzette when you are thousands of miles from land. What is most interesting is just how many Ellipsis you find these old ads. I’m so glad a Creative Director mentor of mine curbed these from me early on. Note: I’ll try posting a few more gems from this over on Linkedin in the coming days. Just too many to share.

6. Deep diving into Taylor Swift

This is a great video comparing Taylor Swift to the Beatles from this New York Times click bait article (Big thanks to Graham MacInness for the share). And I’m not just talking about the brief mention of Right Said Fred. I’m too sexy for this newsletter (Warning: clicking that link will take you back to the magical time of 1991, be careful).

What a fascinating look at what content creation is now and how you need to feed the beast and tour constantly. I think of advertising very similarly - hard to remember who exactly contributed what part to make the ad. It’s a team mentality - more writers room than solo effort.

7. When grid takeovers go wrong

People are still doing Instagram grid takeovers? Apparently yes. My of my favourite reads, Rachel Karten, posted this perfect example of what people really see with your grid obsession. Since I’m always looking for an angle to squeeze in Vanderpump Rules content here, the duo of Katie and Ariana and their newly launched sandwich shop really dialling it in on Instagram. Although like it matters they have shipped over $200k of merch before a single sandwich left the shop. But they should maybe pump up that feed! Do they need help on their website? What is happening?

8. This is my kind of spa

Let’s keep our baseball or sports content light today. At the Nippon Ham Fighters new baseball stadium, you can watch baseball and either have a sauna or enjoy a hot spring. Japan is just on another level of stadium experience.

9. Hat of the week: 1959 Hiroshima Carp

Since we’re in 1959 mode from the ads. I wanted to find something along those lines. And since i want to go sauna and watch baseball in Japan, here is the Ebbets Field Flannels 1959 inspired wool cap of the Hiroshima Carp. The team was established in 1949 as part of the reconstruction efforts after the atomic bomb was dropped. The Carp (Koi) were constantly run like today’s Oakland A’s - in 1953 they could only issue one uniform per player.

10. Last call: The Drink Cart Manhattan

Long before Don Draper was making them popular, and in honor of the 1959 magazine that ended up in my possession, we are talking the Manhattan. It was not invented in 1959, but featured heavily in the classic 1959 film, Some Like It Hot above.

Like all cocktails, its origins are murky-ish. The popular version is that it originated at New York’s Manhattan Club by Iain Marshall for a banquet for the campaign victory of governor Samuel Jones Tilden. Or maybe it was made for Winston Churchill’s mother in the mid 1870s. Except that she was in France. And pregnant at the time.

There were other stories of recipes for a Manhattan as early as the 1860s by a mysterious bartender named Black at place rumoured to be called the Manhattan Inn. There were imposter Tennessee versions. And most interestingly, the story of the the island of Manhattans. Off the German coast in the North Sea the island of Föhr is where the local cocktail is the Manhattan and you can find at pretty much every place - due to some fisherman who spent some time in the Big Apple and brought it home.

Here’s my can’t miss version for when you have the ingredients on the bar cart:

• 2 oz Canadian Whiskey - You know, Rye

• 1 oz Sweet Vermouth

• 2-3 dash Angostura Bitters

• Stir it with some ice, strain it over some fresh ice or in a martini glass, garnish with a good cherry.

That’s another newsletter in the can. What did you think of this week’s edition? Drop a comment or question below and maybe we can be friends over a Manhattan.

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