The Drink Cart: Milking Every Last Drop
We're beating the dead horse. Wringing the Super Bowl content dry. Scrapping the bottom of the barrel and driving it into the ground.
Greetings My Marketing Newsletter aficionados. Can you milk a Super Bowl Ad? Totally. Oh really? Yeah, "I Have Nipples Greg, Could You Milk Me?"
That was a wild way to say I wanted to get in a few more notes in on the big game. But here we are. Trust the process. I know, it’s four days old, but these two nuggets are too good not to share. Never fear! I’ll make it go down with a great post from McDonald’s I can’t stop thinking about. It’s just so stupid and too good. Goes right to my dopamine happy place. Oh, and so true. I’m a Sprite guy.
Now what about those two things? Righhhhht. First I still had this tab open about how Google’s 50 ad strategy designed to show off AI, hallucinated a few pertinent details. One of the ads claimed, “There’s more cows in Wisconsin than there are people.” The ad also said that gouda was, “one of the most popular cheeses in the world, accounting for 50 to 60 percent of the world’s cheese consumption.” Whoops. Thanks to The Verge and Adage we know it’s not. The best part was this wasn’t even an AI problem. Bad googling. That’s no gouda.
The second thought? Which AI ad did the best? Great question. The “USA Today Ad Meter 2025, which surveys consumers, put Google at No. 14 among all the ads; Meta at No. 44; GoDaddy at No. 48; OpenAI at No. 53. Salesforce did not get a ranking on USA Today.” I’m shocked Salesforce didn’t score higher for this madness:
Big Juicy Stat: TubeFilter dropped this stat that kind of makes you think that Youtube is competing with streamers vs. other social platforms: “73% of their YouTube watch time enjoying videos that are more than 30 minutes long. All other videos — including Shorts — shared the other 27%.” Put that one into your deck and smoke it.
Who really won the Super Bowl ads?
It’s complicated. We’ve been going pretty hog wild on Super Bowl Content over at Pound & Grain. So it makes sense to jump into EDO’s predictive TV outcomes data and see what ads “drove the greatest consumer engagement.” Knowing the ad with the most engagement has some Elon in it, it is going to make a bunch of people more mad than they are at DOGE right now. But let’s be honest, we don’t know whatever these numbers really mean. Nice to see Jesus score hight though.
T-Mobile Wireless, You're Connected: 12.6x as much engagement as the median Super Bowl LIX ad
RAM, Drive Your Own Story ft. Glen Powell: 8.5x as much engagement
Liquid Death, It's Safe for Work: 8.0x as much engagement
Universal Pictures, First Dragon Ride: 7.8x as much engagement
Hims & Hers, Sick of the System: 7.7x as much engagement
He Gets Us, What is Greatness?: 6.8x as much engagement
Cirkul, You Got Cirkul: 6.6x as much engagement
Jeep, Freedom ft. Harrison Ford: 6.4x as much engagement
Poppi, Soda Thoughts ft. Jake Shane, Alix Earle, Rob Rausch: 5.5x as much engagement
Universal Pictures’ Jurassic World Rebirth, A New Era: 5.0x as much engagement
📢 Read this week’s Mustard, Pound & Grain’s Newsletter: We endured over 150 Super Bowl ads so you could sound smart in meetings. That was nice of us.
The Mega Sports Spot
Beats by Dre launched a new spot this week featuring three sports giants: Lebron James, Leo Messi and Shohei Ohtani. All to the narration of Wu-Tang’s RZA.
Side note: Wu-Tang always makes me think of this odd speakeasy restaurant a chef was doing in his apartment back in Vancouver. You brought your own drinks, he served up a multi-course meal. His signature was always including these wild Wu-Tang shaped carrots.
Where were we? Oh right. It’s a massive spot. Not just because it’s 2 minutes. Three giant sports stars in one is pretty epic for a brand. Even with Ohtani’s deferred salary that’s $100,728,845 in salaries for 2025.
My only problem with this spot? Isn’t it weird when players aren’t in their real uniforms. It’s like opening up a pack of Donruss baseball cards lately - they don’t have any of the team’s rights so the players are in generic colour and logoless uniforms. It just feels a little weird.
Ad History: Guiness Surfer (1999)
Hadn’t seen this one in a long while. But as I was reading Neal O'Grady’s Growth Newsletter #238 today on the topic of not being so boring (so much good stuff in one newsletter) and the incredible slow build of this spot. As O’Grady notes, the breaks a lot of rules.
It starts completely silent.
It takes 16 seconds for the first word.
The scene doesn't change for 23 seconds.
The sound cuts off again halfway through.
You finally know what the ad is for 83 seconds into the ad.
Then it hangs there for another 17 seconds before it ends.
It’s funny since, I spent time in the last week talking about ads for places like Snapchat (apparently still a thing) and the need to hammer something in that first second. You probably don’t - especially if you are still thinking about that stat on Youtube and length from the opening.
I can’t decide if I prefer the Surfer ad’s line, “Good things come to those who wait” or this old neon sign’s “Guinness is good for you. Gives you strength.” Both are incredible. And I would love a version of that sign in my apartment.
Hat of the week: Breakfast Baseball Hat
Some weeks the hat just comes into your feed and you have no choice but to celebrate it. Breakout the maple syrup, this is the Reading Fighting Phils 2025 morning game alternate brand, the Flapjacks!
Asking for a friend
The real question of today’s newsletter. Do you want a Louis Vuitton Gyoza bag or a chair that is a hot dog? Kind of an existential question, yes?
Shooting on iPhone is still cool
One of my favourite brands, Jacquemus just shot their latest campaign completely on the iPhone 16 Pro Max. The ad shows a typical day and the phone’s crazy zoom capabilities. As someone still driving their iPhone 11 into the ground (much like Super Bowl ad content), it might be time to enter the modern world. To be fair, since 2020 I take about 97% less photos than I used to, so do I need fancy zooming?
The Spite Billboard Era
One thing I loathe are open letters in newspapers. But one thing I love are Larry David Style Spite anything. In this case Geocacher billboards. What’s more shocking is how disruptive this ugly and Lo-Fi design feels on a billboard. Nice.
Last call: The Drink Cart The Peperoncino Martini
A few weeks back I came across this random recipe for a Banana Pepper Martini. I didn’t have any on hand. In the pandemic I had a mishap of buying a giant 2000ML bottle by accident. Got 3% the way in. But I did have some pepperoncinis (Also don’t come at me for something that isn’t made in Canada, This Martini was 100% consumed by a Canadian).
Something about that little bit of tangy spice and the thought of replacing frozen tundras with Mediterranean dreamscapes spoke to me. And I’ve field tested it already. So It’s Drink Cart Approved!
So here’s your sort of spiced up happy hour-tini
2 1/2 oz gin (or vodka)
1/2 oz dry vermouth
1/2 oz pepperoncini brine
A couple of slices of pepperoncini or a whole one for garnish
Shake that with Ice and strain in
Drink Cart Approved™ agency discussion topics
I’m not even sure I understand what Duolingo is doing with their owl mascot - it’s like a WWE storyline.
New AI use case unlocked: Dog Cooking Videos. Food Network, get on this.
What was my most viewed posts on x in the past week? Tell me what you think those crazed people were into most:
Was it: Shohei Ohtani’s dog pictures?
Suggesting that the new NHL Four Nations concept should be “more WWE Royal Rumble style. That after each 20 minutes another team gets on ice.”
Responding to a picture of John Candy in JFK with, “I can hear nothing but, "You got the right ta-ta, but the wrong ho-ho."
Posting “without comment” and a screen shot of Kendrick Lamar’s height to a post.
Making a meme after seeing purple carpet on Bourbon Street. (Spoiler alert: It was this one).
I saw these cafe rules from various outposts of Dishoom. I was taken by the one that says “No madcap schemes.” But today seems like a wonderful day for a madcap scheme. See you next week my Drink Carting friends and cocktail enthusiasts. Don’t wash your hands in your glass please.
The Drink Cart is a weekly newsletter of advertising, pop culture, baseball and cocktails from Jackson Murphy.
Fun week! First, I applaud you on your perfectly placed Gouda pun. Second, it looks like that Jacquemus ad is oner, which makes it extra cool. And finally, a pepperoncini martini sounds pretty amazing. 🍸