The Drink Cart: Small Town Vibes

This week we worked from a small town (WFST) to see if we could live without the comforts of home, like monitors, proper chairs and ads.

Dear Drink Carters. What is it about small towns where you suddenly feel you are legally obliged to say “Good Morning” to every single person you walk past in the morning? It’s pretty cool. Now, I could live without the agressive old dude on his motorized chairs scolding me for giving them wide births and walking on the dangerous “slippery grass” - does he not know that my only kryptonite is ice.

Small towns are pretty great. You can get anywhere in about 8 minutes. Somehow there’s free parking lots. In this economy? Cocktails are available for $13- $17 - even for giant martinis. Oldest of old school Chinese Canadian restaurants have giant menus, reasonable prices and taste exactly how you remember them in the 1980s. The squirrels make their Toronto counterparts look like sickly meth squirrels.

Small towns are also wild. The crosswalks don’t even have countdown timers. There are days where almost everything is closed. Rush hour is like 3 cars stopped at a light. Some coffee shops can’t even be bothered to open until 9:30. Other coffee shops have weird ordering rituals (wait until your coffee is ready and then - and only then - can you advance to pay and/or order your croissant. Strangest set up I’ve seen since the peak law and order of Solly’s confusing line up in Vancouver back in the day.) And I’ll tell you that rule is strictly enforced.

This week we jump into the best of what culture and advertising has thrown our way like:

• The latest Apple copywriting while Advertising discovers it ignores most people

• Cocky billboards, mozza stick maximalism and even an awkward Jira ad

• Halloween costumes, the future of car ads and a Marvel x Minor League Baseball hat crossover and Hallmark x NFL movies

• Plus we’re making The Lost Plane cocktail on the cart

1. Thinner products, duller copy

Apple launched new versions of a bunch stuff with not too much fanfare, for them. As Chris Frantz noted, “that apple event could have been an email.” So batting lead off this week are 3 copy things I found on the landing pages for the new products.

• “Hello, Apple Intelligence.” Okay, okay. Apple’s still trying to wrestle AI from everyone by making it their own. They follow that up later with “AI-opening the possibilities”. Is that enough to make you upgrade to a new phone largely the same? It’s not even a very Apple-y headline. Like it needs to go three steps further.

• Longer copy. Apple used to be the king of short, outrageously surface level copy. I’m not the only one who noticed that. Now they are doing large chunks of copy like this and saying things that Google or Samsung would say like “Highest-quality video in a smartphone.” If anyone tells you something you’re working on is too long, show them that this new iPhone page includes at least 5,143 words. Your copy doesn’t need Ozempic. It just needs to be great.

• “Thinstant Classic.” Now we’re cooking, there’s some Appley-ness on the Watch site. I mean its a lot of talk about a very negligible thin change. But they do it again and again, talking about more screen size and it having a “Monumental display.” Using monumental is pretty rich considering we are talking a size of screen that ranges from 989 - 1220 sq mm display area. Milimetres. Is that monumental? But it is thinner.

Final word: Things could be worse though. They could have launched a trifold phone.

2. Ad Headline of the Week

It’s fitting that I read this Adage piece while in a small town and not the coastal cities of advertising. I’m pretty sure that noone here feels ignored by advertisers. The study showed that, ”Consumers and marketers tend to differ in where they live (the latter largely reside in coastal cities) and spending habits (advertisers will make purchases up to $1,000 on their own while consumers often consult friends and family members before spending $100). These differences cause incongruencies in what advertisers expect consumers to value and what they actually value.”

In a riff on the classic Don Draper response, I’m sure they “don’t think about advertising at all.”

3. The Cockiest Billboard Ads of All Time?

This caught my eye this week. The famed gas station brand Buc-ees has a billboard that famously says the closest location is nearly 600 miles in the other direction. The billboard in New Jersey is 581 miles from the closest location in South Carolina.

Fun fact that are others like this, like one suggesting the next location is 951 miles and two states away from Arizona. Or this one just 291 miles away with the headline, “You can hold it.” Needless to say The Drink Cart is now organizing a pilgrimage to the gas station brand offering the world’s cleanest washrooms, a jerky bar, and the world’s largest convenience store at 75,593 square feet.

4. Mozza Stick Sandwiches

Can we talk about the marketing of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice? I love that one Xer posted back in 2009, “i would like to see Tim Burton's darkly whimsical take on something less obvious, like a Denny's menu.”

And here we are 15 years later and Denny’s has released The Afterlife Menu. The Afterlife Melt is fried mozza sticks inside melted american and provolone cheese grilled between artisanal bread and served with tomato sauce to dip it in.

So it’s a mozza stick sandwich. We’re so back.

5. A Love/Hate Relationship with Jira

I love that someone captured a Jira ad in the wild. As Jason Levin wrote, “Jira marketing team was like ‘what infrastructure is as inefficient and frustrating as us?’ and then puts ads on the New York City subway.” Yeah, i’d mark this issue as done.

6. The Scary Future of Car Ads

Oh good. Ford has submitted patent details for serving up ads inside your car. I’m sure later they will submit a patent so that you can purchase Ford+ and enjoy a fully ad-free driving experience.

As someone who loves advertising, I can fully see the logic in The Hustle’s summary, “Is nowhere safe…from ads? Probably not, unless you’re still rocking an old Chevy with a tape deck, use a dumb phone, and have a TV with an antenna.”

That actually sounds pretty cool.

7. Haunting Costumes

Did you hear? Gen Z loves Halloween. So much so that Chipotle is cosigning a costume line with Spirit Halloween this year. Here’s the product write up of the absolutely mind-numbing burrito costume: “No need to explain what you are this year with this iconic Chipotle Burrito Costume. Warning: May cause main character treatment.” Don’t worry you can also dress as the to go bag or a fork.

8. Hat of the week: Marvel x Hillsboro Hops

I don’t go for these Marvel x Milb crossover things, except I’ve noticed at least 2 other people wearing one of my favourite hats from the Hillsboro Hops - the High-A Minor League Baseball Affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks - in Toronto recently. So this upgrade to the Hillsboro Hops Marvel’s Defenders of the Diamond 59FIFTY Fitted Cap might just be what the hat doctor ordered.

9. NFL x Hallmark

Can we talk about this NFL x Hallmark marketing crossover for a sec? On November 30the the channel drops “Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story.” This is the incredible summary from Variety, “The movie follows Alana Higman (King), ‘who’s sure that her family’s lifelong history as Kansas City Chiefs superfans makes them a frontrunner to win the team’s ‘Fan of the Year’ contest.’ Hynes portrays the director of fan engagement, Derrick, ‘tasked with evaluating how Alana and her family stack up against the other two finalists.’”

Chills. Meanwhile at the Chiefs stadium fans will be treated to Hallmark content all season long from their take on the Kiss Cam, LED animations, a one-of-a-kind Chiefs x Hallmark Channel-themed pennant giveaway and of course the required tailgate hat cocoa activation.

Last call: The Drink Cart Lost Plane

Okay, let’s take a little Drink Cart cocktail journey. And while i’ve been on the road I haven’t had anything like this but did have some really good cocktails like an Apple Butter Old Fashioned and an Orange Pekoe Old Fashioned.

Where was I? Oh right. Sam Ross a New York bartender created the Paper Plane back in 2008. Yes, it’s true he named for the M.I.A song Paper Planes and it is essentially a take on the prohibition era cocktail, The Last Word (shameless cross post to our July 25th newsletter which featured that very cocktail).

So The Lost Plane is essentially a rum based version created by Emily Gosling from Goslings Black Seal Rum. So it’s the rum & amaro paper plane. Got it. While i’ve been thinking about this cocktail I’ve been listening to Vinepair’s latest podcast about Negroni’s and if having them on tap is an outrage to cocktails and reading their Negroni Knockout article.

Here’s my take:

• 1 oz dark rum

• 1 oz Aperol

• 1 oz Amaro Montenegro

• 1 oz fresh lemon juice

• stir with ice then strain and pour over a proper cube in a classic rocks and garnish with a lemon or orange twist.

Your Drink Cart Approved™ agency discussion topics:

• Do we all need writing shacks like Robert Caro? This just makes me feel guilty about the 100’s of pages I need to be reading on The Power Broker.

• These Kelce & Mahomes memes got me all week. But this one was the best.

• What are your thoughts on this hot take on the 34th anniversary of Disney’s Tail Spin?

• Speaking of old animated series, how hardcore is this 49 year old “Return to the Planet of the Apes” opening credit sequence?

• Is this the line of the week from TIFF? “Doing all this to stand around at King and Simcoe is crazy.”

• Discuss: “blue gatorade is so beautiful How lucky are we to have a beverage that smells like healing and tastes like stars.”

• I’m not sure what I think of this “fur-fluencer” piece about Target.

• In case you missed it, I wrote some garbage nonsense about the 2003 classic film, How To Lose A Guy In 10 days.

• Anyone else wanna make little travel journals like this. Bonkers?

• Exit question: These are still the best thing right? Instant nostalgia.

What did you think of this week’s newsletter? Drop me a comment or question below or tell me how your weekly drink turned out.

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