The Drink Cart: Summer Winds

Let’s squeeze a few rays out of the last few weeks of August by talking about advertising with a little spice.

Dear Drink Carters. Yes, I wanted to let Old Blue Eyes get us into the mood this week. “The summer wind came blowin' in from across the sea, It lingered there to touch your hair and walk with me.” Take it away Frank…

Have you the same puzzled look of confusion and horror when someone on your team wants to book a meeting in next two weeks and someone said it would be in September. Pain is the only feeling when you come across this in the wild. I hate it.

Let me go way insider baseball and quote the great Vin Scully in the must-see For the Love of the Game, “He's pitching against time. He's pitching against the future, against age, and even when you think about his career, against ending. And tonight I think he might be able to use that aching old arm one more time to push the sun back up in the sky and give us one more day of summer.”

Last week’s late night was fun, but we are back on the morning shift. This “newsletter” is anything but very demure and honestly not really all that mindful. Join us for:

• Grok’s new image generator bombshell and a new celebrity whiskey entering the villa

• See new rules of bratbranding, burger jackets and the demurification black hole

• Memes IRL, campaigns that make culture, hats with Space Pigs and perfect collaborations

• Plus, we’re mixing up the famous Picante de la casa on the cart.

1. Whatcha gonna do when Grok’s new image generator runs wild on you

X’s new image feature launched with Grok-2 and the shock from many about its lack of “guardrails” is everywhere. Sure enough images of things like a pregnant Kamala Harris embracing Donald Trump went super mega-viral. That you can so easily make a very unrealistic image of Harris and her own Doritos flavour does not seem to be the end of all existence as we know it. It’s still kind of incredible.

I like this take from The Free Press’ Kat Rosenfield, “While these images range in quality from ‘amusing’ to ‘offensive’ to ‘the stuff of my screamingest nightmares,’ all of them are very obviously fake. But commentators are panicking over them all the same—not because people might mistake the images for reality, but because Grok isn’t stopping people from making them.”

2. Beyonce Celebrity Whiskey

It’s that time again. There’s a new celebrity booze launching. This time, we have the incredibly smug $89.99 a bottle SirDavis whiskey - by the one and only Beyoncé Knowles-Carter. You know, my go to when thinking of an American whiskey, made in Texas, is to partner with Moët Hennessy. So classic.

Here’s three things that we’re thinking about:

• The main headline on the website is: “The Future of Whisky is here” (which is trademarked for some ungodly reason) before talking about the Moët Hennessy and saying “Like nothing ever before it; reimagine whisky.” Because you see, it’s “a new way to whisky.” Bold choice with that semi colon. Sure.

• They are rule breakers. They spell whiskey, with no e, so it’s whisky. “At SirDavis, we're not always conventional when it comes to whisky norms, starting with our unique spelling of 'whisky'. Our signature mash bill and its uniquely high barley content with a sherry cash finish draws inspiration from global whisky styles such as Japanese and Scottish whiskies, both known for omitting the 'e' in whisky.” I can only imagine what page of the pitch deck that was on. It must crush them that in most articles no one drops the e.

• The press release used the following words: groundbreaking, first-of-its-kind, one-of-a-kind, vanguards of culture, challenge the category norms, excellence and luxury whisky. It’s weird since I’d just been hearing on social media about people wanting a whiskey that challenges category norms. They did it.

And if Beyoncé shows up later tonight at the Democratic National Convention she’ll be another nearly billionaire who wants Americans to buy an over priced luxury whiskey spelled without the e.

3. New Rules of branding

This article about the creatives behind Brat explains the new rules of branding. “Branding right now is very [Ettore] Sottsass. Motifs that call to mind glamorous OOO fantasies, like colorful French Riviera vacations as seen in Glossier’s summer collection; nostalgic aesthetic callbacks to summers of yesteryear; and the loud, proud self-indulgence of summer as a state of mind, rather than a place, exemplified by Brat green.”

I’ll save you the trouble. Here’s the three highlights:

1. We’re more nostalgic than ever

2. Boldness is the new authentic

3. Celebrate realness over fakery

Now you can take a shot every time you see these in decks for the next 18 months. Shock of shocks, pulled directly from the Kamala Harris campaign, is that branding is really about joy. “The brands that stand out going forward offer a sense of joy, realness, and authenticity that’s bold, personality-driven, and offers something new to say.” I can’t wait for this joy trend to be over with.

4. Game of Burgers

I’ve really been interested in this startup, Blackbird. And this week their latest email featured a modern take on those old Entertainment coupon books. You pay $250 to join the Burger League of New York and you join “a recreational club and cadre of experts on the fine art of burger hunting.” Tell me more.

Are the benefits worth it? I’ll let Tom Stevens, a Strategist at our agency Pound & Grain, fill you in: “You get a customized tasting jacket! I really like their work with influencers on their IG page too. They seem to have a proper insider's track on the NYC dining scene so have built up a lot of credibility there with their surrounding content.”

When Tom drops words like “proper” you know something is extra cool. But we agree the tasting jacket is such a fun way to bring the brand and program to life. I’d say their newsletter, The SuperSonic is equally good at giving that inside track. Now I want a burger.

5. The Demure-ification of everything?

If you haven’t seen the “very demure, very mindful” meme yet, I applaud you for avoiding being chronically online. In short, the trend was a TikTok video from beauty influencer Jools Lebron who showed off her make up look and described herself “very demure, very mindful.”

That earworm has been everywhere over the past 30 days. I liked this summary of brands going ham on it and using in emails. And now Lebron is turning that into cold hard cash bringing it to videos and even landing pages for brands like Netflix. It’s cool that Netflix didn’t just rip the headline off for this. At the same time, the beginning of the end of a good meme is the commercialization of it. So it’s been nice while it lasted if you use it in a deck or even a zoom starting now, you are officially cringe. You’ve been warned.

6. Tiktok Memes Crossing Over to OOH

Speaking of chronically online people, here’s a real world example of a writer riffing on the “Of Course” trend or meme. The thing is, it really doesn’t translate that effectively as a headline.

I also think the “Of Course” is the part that needs to be emphasized the most. See alos: Spending your weekend at Trinity Bellwoods is also just the most expected thought too, right? It’s like calling that park a hidden gem.

7. This is how you enter the culture

Calvin Klein follows up their Jeremey Allen White spring campaign with even more vibes than the Harris campaign and tapping deep into the music catalog with 1982’s “We Got The Beat” by The Go-Go’s.

Not much to add to this. This is a marketing formula that can work over, and over again and on trend for today, isn’t recycling a meme from TIktok. It will be making memes on Tiktok - see the difference? One post I read simply called out that, “advertising is BACK.” I can’t argue with that.

8. Hat of the week: Space Pigs

I was very tempted to submit this unreal Master and Commander hat. But I couldn’t skip past this beauty. The Philadelphia Phillies Triple A affiliate, the Lehigh Valley IronPigs is doing a game this week as the Space Pigs. Unfortunately, unless you have a very small head, you’re a bit out of luck on getting one of these.

As a consolation prize they do have a perfect Bacon hat worth looking into. And let’s be honest, this was mostly worth sharing so I could post some timely on-theme Muppets content:

9. Reese on Reese’s

You just can’t miss with this marketing no-brainer. I’m actually just surprised it took this long to launch. But the Angel Reese and Reese’s candy campaign and apparel collection finally launched this week and is perfect. If your product is the same name as one of the brightest stars in sports or culture, you gotta spend those sponsorship dollars. The end.

Last call: Picante de la Drink Cart

Shamelessly we are sharing one of our favourite cocktails. It’s been a while, but I’ve actually made these on our own agency drink carts - and with summer winding down - it makes sense to break out the Reposado Tequila and get into it.

So this is one that was made famous from the Soho House and bartender Chris Ojeda. It’s very simple and is kind of riff on a margarita - it’s a little sweet. A little savoury. And comes with the kick of spice you want.

Here’s my take:

• Muddle a few Cilantro Leaves and red chilli pepper slices

• 2 oz Reposado Tequila

• 3/4 oz Fresh Lime Juice

• 1/2 oz Agave Syrup

• 2-4 Dashes of citrus bitters

• Add the tequila, juice syrup and bitters to the muddle and shake over ice, before pouring it over ice in a classic rocks glass. Top that thing with end of the chilli pepper.

Now, as you can shake this up and enjoy here’s some Drink Cart Approved™ agency discussion topics (inspired by this Dad who has a full on agenda for every Friday with his crew - which is my dream):

• How hard the logo of The East India Company went, maybe the largest company of all time. Discuss.

• Did society peak when our Pizza Huts looked like this?

• Was it good there wasn’t WIkipedia around when we were much younger simply based on this page?

• Should Kevin James be the official opening host of the 2028 LA Olympics?

• This SNL skit for Donald Trump’s House of Wings

• Theo Von’s ad read for AI is why you shouldn’t let podcasters do your ads, right?

• Do we really need squeezable peanut butter?

• Should agencies ever use the words nectar or honey when talking about themselves?

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.