The Drink Cart: Humanity As A Service
The only ad newsletter not shot on 35mm to make AI feel human, but watching tech companies cosplay as your friend.
Dear marketing fans, humans (allegedly) and everyone who wants AI to call them “Piggy” and tell them they’re doing a good job watching videos today.
AI has had another massive week. We have Anthropic’s ClaudeSonnet 4.5 out here coding, “autonomously for up to 30 hours during early trials with some enterprise customers.” So we’re not just vibe coding anymore. In that 30 hours the AI built an application, stood up database services, purchased domain names and performed audits to ensure the product was secure.
Then advertising Social Media erupted in a discussion over AI firm’s massive $1 million OOH takeover of New York this week. This week’s subway takeover comes from Friend.com, an AI startup betting its future on an all-print campaign plastered across New York’s trains and stations.
The product is a $129 wearable “companion” that listens to your every conversation and chimes in like a digital confidant, already stirring up privacy backlash. Not to mention that the product still hasn’t shipped orders from last year, yet.
The company claim this is the “Largest NYC subway campaign ever.” With “11,000+ car cards 1,000+ platform posters, 130 urban panels, West 4th St. domination.”
Now, of course you have those like Antonio García Martínez saying that like any press being good press, the backlash is working. “The more people tweet this is dumb, the smarter it was to do.”
And you have reactions like, “Ad campaign to get you to replace real people with AI. You’re never seeing heaven bro.”
The ads themselves are stark, minimalist and almost begging to be defaced, which of course they were almost immediately, as New Yorkers scrawling lines like “surveillance capitalism” across the posters.
It’s a gamble built on friction and tension maxing, and the kind of campaign that wants its critics as much as its fans. As Ad Week reports founder Avi Schiffmann, ”designed the creative on Figma and wrote the copy himself with the intention of deliberately courting conversation, he said. The minimalist creative is heavy on white space, purposefully daring viewers to react.”
“I know people in New York hate AI, and things like AI companionship and wearables, probably more than anywhere else in the country,” Schiffmann told the ad mag. “So I bought more ads than anyone has ever done with a lot of white space so that they would socially comment on the topic.”
That sounds like something you seriously post-rationalize to me. And I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much graffiti on an ad campaign before. There are so many photos of unhinged takes on the ads. (New Yorkers are the best.)
Meanwhile, OpenAI just had rolled out Pulse, their take on proactive AI, “where ChatGPT proactively does research to deliver personalized updates based on your chats, feedback, and connected apps like your calendar.” Opened up a direct to check out feature so you can buy from ChatGPT at places like Etsy and Shopify.
Speaking of AI, Meta also launch a new thing called Vibes. What is it? It’s “a new feed in the Meta AI app for short-form, AI-generated videos.”
The reaction wasn’t great. As many opinions were kind of similar to this: “For those who find the content on Reels to be too dang sophisticated” Or maybe more, “I’ve been telling people that one of my big concerns about the country is that people don’t have access to enough short-form video content.”
But I think the best reaction is from Mike Bird, the Wall Street editor for The Economist.
“Altman: we are building a digital God
Huang: transformative humanoid robots will be everywhere soon
Amodei: we can compress 50 years of human progress into 5 years
Zuckerberg: you are a little piggy, I’m going to hook you up to my slop machine, and you’ll love it”
What’s fascinating is that ChatGPT refused to make an image like the slop machine piggy. “I can’t create that image. The request involves harmful or demeaning depictions, which I can’t generate.”
You don’t say. But it had no problem whatsoever hooking the piggy up to an AI slot machine. So maybe this parody of strange kabab behaviour isn’t such a fantasy. And just like Meta, Open AI even announced their own Tiktok-style short form AI video service. So I guess Sam Altman is just as much a piggy farmer as Mark Zuckerberg.
Drink Cart Approved™ agency discussion topics
Love this peak at the Los Angeles Chargers brand and the scaling intensity of it all. Very cool approach.
Cava dropped their own social dating show, Bowlmates.
Talent Agents are trying to sign an AI Actress named Tilly Norwood.
Apple used the new iPhone 17 Pro to broadcast last Fridays Tigers-Red Sox game.
Sorry I can’t. I’m watching a live stream. No really.
In 1998 you could get a Hanson short when you bought Strawberry Eggos. Incredible promotion.
5.5 million people are rocking the Oura rings? This is wild.
As usual Greggs leads the way with a runway ready sausage roll purse. I want a sausage roll real bad right now.
Ad History: American Blue Parliament (1989)
There’s a 1989 Parliament American Blue commercial going around Instagram set to Al Jarreau’s “After All” that proves why cigarette advertising was so dangerous. Not because it was manipulative, but because it was so good.
Dreamy cinematography, soft focus, lighting that makes everyone look like they’re in a Sade video. It’s not selling cigarettes. It’s selling a vibe before vibes were an aesthetic and everything is bathed in impossibly cool blue light. If you we’re smoking by the end of this ad, you’ve watched to much short form AI video content.
ChatGPT Also entered the AI branding wars
Sure they launched their own video slop bucket, but ChatGPT’s also dropped their latest ads and curiouser, dropped the “we’re-building-the-future” energy for something far less exciting. Super attractive young people asking ChatGPT to help with dinner recipes and road trips.
Is this normcore-ification of AI pure genius? Or just the next step in preparing your slot feedbag at the buffet? They made it look like an A24 movie. Aspirational but attainable. Cool but not alienating. And the reason? The creative team include some of the same people that brought you the iconic look of Spring Breakers and Euphoria.
They want AI styled like your favourite indie movie, shot like a cool documentary on Netflix and directed like something that respects your intelligence. And as Emily Sundberg notes in Feed Me, “The campaign feels incredibly well-timed given the havoc that the creepy Friend.com ads are causing in the subway.”
Last call: The Drink Cart: Bobby Burns
After all that, it’s time for a cocktail. This week, the Bobby Burns. A cocktail that sounds Scottish given the Scotch whiskey, the poet’s name— yep, all very Scottish. You know what comes next. A classic SNL skit. Because “If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!”
But the dirty little secret is that it was probably invented in Manhattan and named after a cigar salesman. Classic.
It’s the kind of brand story that is tailor made for advertising drinkers: take something with zero authentic connection to a place, slap a heritage story on it and watch people toast to tradition. Huzzah.
There’s no shocker here. It’s a Rob Roy (Scotch Manhattan) with Bénédictine doing some heavy lifting to make you feel extra fancy after a client presentation. It all feels very fall-ish. And is like liquid slop for advertising people.
Here’s my take on it:
2 oz Scotch whisky
3/4 oz sweet vermouth
1/4 oz Bénédictine
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Stir with ice, strain into a coupe or cocktail glass.
Garnish with a lemon twist.
Feel like we needed the full Al Jarreau song. 1984. No AI slop video content to be seen in this masterpiece.
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.