The Drink Cart: Cooking Our Brains

The only newsletter that microwaves your frontal lobe while writing a side effect jingle in a pharma musical ad.

Dear branding obsessed marketing fans, brain-boiled doom scrollers and anyone who’s ever booked a stay at a luxury bee hotel.

Ad Age just dropped its list of the hottest brands. Every time I read lists like this I convince myself I’m finally going to understand why anyone would care that a plush elephant influencer has a brand partnership with State Farm. But here we are.

This year’s list includes Guinness (sure split that G), weird grinning dolls (am i the only one who doesn’t get the Labubu hype?) and a hand sanitizer “for young trendsetters” (which feels like post-Covid satire but isn’t).

These are the kinds of things that get name-dropped in brand decks by someone wearing vintage sneakers who’s been workshopping phrases like “cultural resonance” since Cannes at every opportunity. This is not stuff anyone’s actually talking about at cocktail parties. It’s what happens when the only feedback loop is five marketers are all nodding at each other in a glass meeting room.

Sure, LinkedIn, Notion and Substack are things I actually use, but come on. At what point did “hot brand” become some sort of secret code for “my intern made a TikTok for me and this is what I put in decks now”? What are we doing here? I heard someone on House of Villains Season 2 use the throwback term, “Get a Life” the other day. And it seems to work quite well here. So I’m bringing it back. Get a life.

Meanwhile, Vox gently confirmed what we all suspected all along: we’re cooking our own brains into attention-deficient reduction sauce, one 17-second Reel at a time. Oh good. This read reminds me that people (and I may count myself in this) are watching 108 minutes of Tiktok a day. Thats double what people are doing on Instagram. Zuckerberg, call your office.

Here’s the interesting part: “Researchers studying this phenomenon argue that this amounts to a dark pattern, a design that manipulates you to make certain choices. You’ve encountered dark patterns on websites that trick you into signing up for a newsletter or an ad you can’t click out of. Torrents of short-form videos like you see on TikTok are especially pernicious because the feeds are designed to keep you fully engaged and foraging for good content.”

Foraging for content. That sounds so hipster, like we’re finding enoki mushrooms in the forrest. Which is maybe why a pharma ad where every side effect should be sung in harmony felt, kind of moving this week?

Want another brain melting example? I clocked this screen shot on X last night. The AI slop overview didn’t tell you where the buffet near you was, just that you can “use online search engines like Google or Yelp, specifying “all you can eat buffet near me.” It’s kind of amazing that we’re fine with this.

So here we are: dizzy from content foraging that is rotting our brains, flooded with AI stupidity while it makes incredible images and support, deeply sincere about pharma baseball musicals (you just wait) and slightly concerned that the dirty soda shops from Secret Lives of Mormon Wives are now a cultural milestone. It will have you singing, “It has so many awesome parts. You simply wont believe. How much this book can change your life.”

Let’s get into it.

Drink Cart Approved™ agency discussion topics

• I was today years old when I found out there was a 1969 Christmas with Colonel Sanders album. Do with that what you will.

• I love that the Goodyear Blimp got into it when someone said they were obsolete because of drones. “Call me when a drone has a fan club.”

• Why does nothing beat a Jet2 holiday? If you know, you know.

• What’s the point of a secret menu, if it doesn’t stay secret?

• Fascinated that after 15 years Mercedes has replaced John Hamm as their brand voice.

Miniature Hotels for Switzerland Tourism

Who doesn’t love a miniature anything? I love this faux nature documentary style video about the various styles of hotels all sized up for the bees.

Ad history: General Foods International Coffee (1992)

This product was such a vibe. The ads portrayed these ridiculously flavoured instant coffee mixes as some sort of luxurious escape, like a mini-vacation in a cup. The ads were all about these friends, in peak 90s cozy settings and reminiscing about that time in Paris and “that café." Please. You were on that ridiculous patio, in soft clothes, in the softest lighting of all time, faking joy with boiling sugar water and lies.

For the real trick was the little jingle tagline, "Celebrate the moments of your life" that turned somehow turned a powered coffee drink into an emotional life vest. We all know this powder was really adult hot chocolate mix.

And if you think that is a trip, imagine my surprise revisiting these 1994 versions where adults are amazed at drinking powered Kahlua or the Italian Cappuccino version. The subtext is off the charts in these. I have to imagine that General Foods International Coffees was actually CIA plot right?

This is how you do a tribute

This Hank Aaron tribute at the 2025 MLB All-Star Game was a very cool way to do it. Using the field as a visual canvas to show the moment when he became the All-Time Home Run hitter with 715. You had me at the firework blasting from home plate to mark the home run trajectory. Chills.

This is how you do pharma musical ad

As you know, I love slipping secret baseball content into this newsletter. And since you know I managed to watch at least some of the All-Star Game, I had to share one of the ads that ran at least twice. And I’m obsessed with this baseball music spot for Jardiance, a type 2 diabetes drug. Figure we might as well imagine the pitch.

INT. PHARMA BOARDROOM – MORNING

CREATIVE DIRECTOR: “Okay. We open on a man in a baseball uniform up to bat. And then he sings: "I have type 2 diabetes… but I manage it well…”

SENIOR BRAND MANAGER: Wait. It’s all singing?

CREATIVE DIRECTOR (dead serious): Every. Single. Word. "It’s a little pill with a big story to tell…”

COPYWRITER: You see, he’s not just up to bat in the game. He’s up to bat at life again.

CREATIVE DIRECTOR (dead serious): Exactly, he’s lowering his A1C and the risk of cardiovascular death, while his OPS is .933.

LEGAL (nervously flipping through script): What about the side effects?

CREATIVE DIRECTOR (with jazz hands): Also sung. In harmony.

ACCOUNT DIRECTOR (nervously): He’s kidding. Just a little pitch humour. No, we get the most serious voice on Earth to read the side effects. Think, Werner Herzog or Morgan Freeman, but super cheap. They calmly describe the risks of swelling or redness in the genital area while baseball teams do coordinated dance moves.

CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Yes, and we show the cutest bat dog while he’s talking too, so emotionally, you’re still enjoying America’s pastime despite the swelling right.

SENIOR BRAND MANAGER (stunned): Honestly? This might be the greatest ad we’ve ever made. Our CEO loves baseball and broadway.

CREATIVE DIRECTOR (softly, emotionally, tear down cheek): That’s why we have such a big story to tell together. Also, we’ve optioned the rights for the national tour.

LEGAL (total buzzkill): Um, we’ll need to submit that to the FDA, the FTC and probably the Tony Awards committee, you can’t have a tap number on a baseball field if the players have urinary tract infections.

Greatest Brand Collab of all time?

More baseball related content? Jokes on all of you! The MLB Home Run Derby winner, Cal Raleigh who’s nickname is “Big dumper” shared that he’s partnering up with the a leader in portable sanitation services, the equally ridiculously named, Honey Bucket. There’s not a pitch deck that could be more clear and aligned that this collab.

Two things struck me. The first is that Honey Bucket has 10,000 followers on Instagram. That’s insane. Who follows portable sanitation accounts? Weirdos. The second is that someone on that platform requested, “We need Honey Bucket X Big Dumper merch!!!” I don’t even know what to see with that.

Last call: The Drink Cart Penicillin

This week’s cocktail hits like a surreal mix of cooked brains and pharma ad musicals. Invented in 2005 by Australian bartender Sam Ross in New York, the Penicillin is named not because it’ll cure you (we wish), but because it kind of feels like it might.

Think of it as a smoky, boozy nod to Alexander Fleming’s greatest hit, with the same comforting kick as a hot toddy, minus the sick day excuses. It won’t fix your cold, but it might make you forget you ever had one. Somehow the Wiki page for this drink claims it is the 11th most ordered drink in the world. Te be honest, that sounds like total fantasy land. Like saying Instagram Reels are good for your attention span or that LinkedIn is just totally chill fun now. Maybe someone’s microwaving that stat too.

If the overrated espresso martini is today’s influencer of cocktails, then the Penicillin is is the off grid wierdo who grows their own ginger and swears by peat smoke and might still own a pager. They don’t post on social. They ferment.

Here’s my take on the recipe:

• 2 oz blended Scotch

• 3/4 oz fresh lemon juice

• 3/4 oz honey-ginger syrup

• 1/4 oz IScotch to float on top, you know for health reasons

• Garnish it with good old fashioned lemon wheel or if you’re real fancy, some candied ginger

PS: My safe word is whiskey.

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The Drink Cart is your weekly fuel for pop culture brains and ad junkies. A cocktail of ad insights and hot takes that feel like you’re hanging at your favourite dive bar after launching your latest campaign.