The Drink Cart: Splash Zone

No running on the pool deck kids and absolutely no swimming in the city, it's super gross. But don't you worry, we've got a sneak peak at Christmas in July🎄

Good news everyone. June is almost over and we are in that rare time of year when only baseball matters. Wait, there are two competing football tournaments that make for some great watching and if you’re really pressed for content - tonight’s Presidential Debate should be worth a Drink Cart cocktail or three viewing.

Here are a few quick opening takes:

• My FYP is full of these wonderful 1980s saxophone montage Tiktoks. And I love them. My favourite is captioned: “This song reminds me of that cold case I never cracked as a detective in NYC in the winter of ‘83 (I was also born in ‘88 and never lived in NYC a day in my life.”

• If you had this phone in the 90s you were the coolest.

• Triscuit rebranded and thankfully they still taste great. I didn’t notice a single difference when purchasing.

• Did I really read this lengthy exploration into Bennifer 2.0 this morning? You betcha.

• Snoop Dogg should do sports commentary full time. So good.

• Lastly, for the Tennis people, this 2017 Pimms Wimbledon Rube Goldberg machine is amazing. Damn, should have suggested a Pimms this week. Too late.

Today’s “newsletter” is a bit of a summer mystery box of random culture and advertising:

• We’ve got anti-travel ads, zombie brands and AI origin stories and AI hellscapes

• Mascots, mascot brand crossovers and brand crossovers with crocs

• A special break down of Summer Christmas Hallmark premiers

• We’ve also got dog hats and the rummiest of rum cocktails to make the icky feeling of doing timesheets when it’s 30 outside go away.

1. Swimming in the middle of the city? It’s disgusting

This Visit Oslo campaign by NewsLab, is very special. The driest of dry humour for a tourism ad told by someone completely unimpressed by the city. What a way to sell a city.

2. Croc x Porsches Sport Mode

This is what I like about advertising right now. For every Porsche Tiktok collab with Crocs that piles up 7.1 million views in 5 days and is celebrated by someone on Linkedin for scoring 878k likes, 6,300 comments and 78k saves. There is an army of people in their comments with some variety of, “Ackchyually, Gen Z’s don’t buy Porsches” followed by others responding, “You’re so wrong, it’s making Porsche aspirational for them” and then someone else chimes in with “No, this is making Gen Z want to buy Crocs, not Porsches.”

I just had my bowl of popcorn and am watching the sparks fly. It’s wildly more entertaining than whatever Windex is doing on my feed this week.

3. Irrelevant toy store brand does origin story with AI

Toys”R”Us, which The Verge called a Zombie brand, shared a teaser video using OpenAI’s Sora. “It depicts a young Charles Lazarus, founder of Toys”R”Us and creator of Geoffrey the Giraffe, dreaming of a magical place that will change toy stores forever.”

Not only does it look like some sort of knockoff or Zombie Pixar, does anyone care about what is arguably the most mid of mascots, Geoffrey the Giraffe? I bet you weren’t expecting a hot take about Geoffrey, but here we are. So this Lazarus guy changed toy stores forever, until nobody cared about toy stores anymore. Got it. Needless to say, agency world insiders were hella mad.

4. Christmas in July

Trigger warning. When you started reading this newsletter, I would imagine the terms and conditions failed to flag that there may - from time to time - be some Hallmark content. Surprise, Surprise. It’s here. Now that that is out of the way, we can jump right into the new holiday movies dropping on Hallmark starting next week for their annual, and completely ridiculous Christmas in July. Yes, Hallmark drops all new Christas stories in July.

You’ve been warned and Drink Cart’s diligent legal department is no longer slacking me in all caps about this “bait and switch” content. So I’m now going to go ahead and rank this year’s offering for you using Christmas Trees emojis out of 5. You’re welcome.

Three Wise Men and a Baby: Extended Cut - 🎄

Fine, I like the 1987 film call back, but this is my least favourite Hallmark format. I want small town romance, not three dudes babysitting in elf suits.

Rescuing Christmas - 🎄🎄

The only thing I like less than babysitting in the Hallmark universe is magic. Using wishes to wish away Christmas? Borderline sacrilege.

Falling Like Snowflakes - 🎄🎄🎄

A lot of promise in this one. A photographer on a mission to capture a rare photo of a 12-sided snowflake with the help of a childhood friend. Oh my.

An Ice Palace Romance - 🎄🎄🎄

Stop the presses! You had me at, “A journalist faces old fears when she returns to her hometown ice rink to cover a story.”

A Very Vermont Christmas - 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

Ho Ho Ho! This one is the holiday home run. This has everything you want from a Hallmark Christmas offering. A champion skier. A Local brew master (Leave that hot chocolate for the kids!). They are of course an “unlikely match” (read: hate each other for 75% of movie) to make a seasonal microbrew! Oh, that microbrew has to save the family business by Christmas. Chefs Kiss.

5. Green Pants Unifying Theory

If you missed out on Cannes, you must have missed out on the ability in the future to buy the green pants that someone is wearing in the video you are watching. As if Hollywood didn’t have enough problems in getting people to watch content they will be in a constant state of shopping.

This sounds just like a new streaming hellscape. A hack I have is, that if Gary Vaynerchuk is over the top pumped about something - especially ad tech - it’s best to take the other side of the bet.

6. The Bacon Sandwich Shop

I want to jump on this idea right now. Rory Sutherland is a great follow and person to hear. Just a hot take factory. And this idea is so great there would be lines around the block for sure. I’m certain that builders tea is not my cup, but everything else is on the level. And as someone who has only had real bacon maybe 2 times in the last year or so, it sound divine. Who’s with me?

7. Absolute Brand Chaos

Have you been following the strange collaboration between the New York Mets and McDonald’s? Long story short: On June 12th, after a disasters start the baseball season, Grimace threw out the first pitch at a game. The Mets then went on a 7-0 tear. They have lost a couple times since then, now at 11-2. Still a great run and they just beat the Yankees the last two nights. Memes. Social posts. Shirts. None of it has stopped.

They even lit up the Empire State Building in Grimace-Mets theme on Tuesday. By last night, off-brand Grimaces are chugging beers during rain delays. And yes, this is a second item about Mascots. Two intersting side notes: 1. Grimace and Mets seem to be strictly an X platform thing. X is all sports. 2. Has McDonald’s lost control of the mascot to a baseball team?

The Drink Cart Debate: But on multiple podcasts and articles, I’ve seen lines like this, “He’s also a purple amorphous blob named Grimace who is better known for hawking hamburgers.” Wait what? An amorphous blob? McDonald’s insisted, in a 2012 Tweet, that he is the “embodiment of a milkshake.” A purple shake? Outrageous.

And everyone knows he’s a taste bud right? Let’s just say this is something that is unsettled. And I’m not some sort of Grimace truther or anything like that, but he’s tastebud and I’ll take that to my grave or fight you about it.

8. A very special set of design skills

This cracks me up. A designer is including tracings of Liam Neesom’s head shape on his designs. In this example of car sharing brand GoMore’a how page, his Nessom head shape has become an island.

9. Hat of the week: Binghamton Grumble Pugs

This is just shameless callback time. Remember the Mets and Grimace stuff? Welp, turns out their Double A team, the Binghamton Rumble Ponies, also has a mascot named Marvelous Marvin the Pug.

And on his birthday on August 17th, the team will play a game as the Binghamton Grumble Pugs. And the only thing better than one pup is three - a "grumble" of pugs as everyone should know is 3 or more pugs in a group. Now you know.

10. Last call: The Drink Cart Cannes Punch

Originally I wanted to share a cocktail that was purple in honor of Grimace. Then I was inspired by that Oslo story and the time I visited a Tiki bar there and if memory serves, had $45 cocktails - because nothing is cheap in Norway. But as you can imagine, the list of purple cocktails is limited. So the logical choice was as the monsters here are seen enjoying, a Hurricane. This is the signature cocktail of New Orleans, now an iconic Tiki staple.

The origin story? Not as muddled as some. When whiskey was hard to come by in World War II, the bartenders of Pat O’Brien’s improvised with a large overstock of rum. And mostly what you gotta respect about the Hurricane - and what makes it ideal for an ad agency drink cart - is the powerful kick that can only come from four ounces of rum in each drink. Kaboom.

The Drink Cart: Hurricane

• 2 oz light rum

• 2 oz dark rum

• 2 oz passion fruit juice

• 1 oz orange juice

• ½ oz fresh lime juice

• ½ tablespoon simple syrup

• ½ tablespoon grenadine

• Garnish: you better believe you need that stupid chunky orange slice and fluorescent cherry

After exactly one Drink Cart Hurricane:

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

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