The Drink Cart: Vibe Shifts

Vibes are shifting in elections, short term rentals and in AI.

Dear Drink Carters. This week the theme is mostly about vibe shifts. Disney+ has invented “tv channels”, Mr. Beast has a Chief Human Resources Officer and legal counsel so you know that is the beginning of the end for the brand and this might be the most incredible video of the week that is all about vibe shifting.

Today’s “newsletter” is full of things you don’t need but really want just like at the Bouquinistes in Paris:

• We sprint to the finish with vibe shifting marketing from Airbnb and Apple

• We shift vibes on Content Factories, AI and 2024 websites

• We dive from 30m platforms into niche memes, jean short hats and hot dogs

• And most importantly we serve up the companion to last week’s cocktail with the Champs Elysees as we say goodnight to Paris 2024 with the monks.

1. Marketing vs. Markets

I’ve been a fan of Airbnb’s stunt rentals for a long time. Staying in the Musee D’Orsay? Amazing. This week they made a life-size Polly Pocket. I still don’t have any idea what that is (I tried reading up), but what I do know is that it is one hundred percent impractical to live in a folding home that when open has no roof. Which is why there is a “life-sized Action Park Tent just 10 feet away from the compact” for when you’re tired of “slumber party fun.” See also: the comments on cleaning fees which are hilarious.

Of course this week while they executed another crowd-pleasing marketing stunt, the wheels are coming off the Airbnb stock and consumer demand for short term stays. CNBC reported that, “Airbnb shares drop 14% on earnings miss as company warns of slowing U.S. demand.” And this is what makes marketing so intersting. A bunch of investors will be mad about wasting this money, when this money likely got a lot of people to look into Airbnbs. That’s the ultimate vibe shift. Stock down, giant 90s make up

2. Tell me you’re an Olympic campaign, without telling me you’re an Olympic campaign

The official cell phone of the Olympics is Samsung. But here’s Apple doing some beautiful vibe shifting damage control for iPad after crushing all of creativity in their last spot by showing off some very cool work made on the device by Simon Landrein. (Via this thread from NikiasMolina) What strikes as the most amazing is the size of the logo. Incredible.

3. Shot: We need content factories

I see we’ve reached the “content factory” stage of advertising. How exiting. As Ad Age tells it, “Commercial and content production has become a growing issue across the industry as the amount and pace of production, particularly of video, increases.”

Okay. I’m jealous when you start talking about increasing, “brand marketing spending by 20%, or by an additional $400 million, this year.” I guess the label of factory makes sense. It just sounds so wrong. Not just studio? Reading between the lines, commodification of all the content across your brands is really about cost-savings and volume. And likely pushing as much AI as we possibly can into the production process no matter the costs. How’s this vibe shift feeling? Ready to work at a content factory? Better than content sweatshop?

4. Chaser: Is Generative AI just a bubble?

On Monday, we started to see that maybe AI is a bit over its skis as the vibe shifts on it rapidly. The “short” stock market blip was heavily impacted by those stocks heavily into AI as investors start to wonder if or when AI will actually pay off. The Atlantic’s Matteo Wong writes about the AI future, “The build-out may demand a trillion dollars or more of investment across the economy this decade—more than the Apollo missions or the interstate-highway system.”

Enormous amounts of money are flowing into AI - so things like the aforementioned “Content Factories” will likely need that AI to help churn out the ever increasing amounts of content for AI based algorithms to give us more things we like, while we consume even more Cheetos virtually uninterrupted as we scroll.

Wong offers a little positive hope unless you are still a crypto-bro, “For all the talk of generative AI as a truly epoch-shifting technology, it may well be more akin to blockchain, a very expensive tool destined to fall short of promises to fundamentally transform society and the economy.” Is it a bubble? Maybe. It seems that AI will likely get more investment as tech companies and AI evangelists are still so positive on this being inevitable.

5. How to make anything compelling

I wasn’t expecting a nearly 7-minute video about the brutality of the 400m race to be so compelling, but this is a great example of hyper-detailed content that makes you more interested in a subject. The combination of information through video, motion graphics and tight scripting is a masterclass example. It doesn’t have to be short to be good.

6. 2024 Design

Wait? Neither of them are looking at the donate buttons? I’m always interested in what graphic design comes out of the US election. You can tell a lot about it from first impressions as this race is experiencing multiple vibe shifts over the last 3 weeks.

For Harris, we have the now clear Obama 2008 take over donate screen - but unlike his innovation, they aren’t looking at the buttons at all. I guess now that we are running more on vibes, do you need to? It clearly doesn’t matter as donations have been rapidly coming in - over $300 million and counting.

Their actual donation page is unremarkable, but it is where Harris is actually looking at the buttons. It’s kind of wild that while the site now has running mate Tim Walz front and center, they have no policy content whatsoever, just bios and a store where they are now selling Camo hunting baseball hats for Harris Walz. Which may be ripped off from pop star Chappell Roan? Probably funniest 2024 branding thing I saw is where Creative Director Aisha Hakim redid the Harris Walz logo with complimentary re-kerning. (Type nerds, that one was for you!)

Meanwhile Trump is not looking at the button either - and that seems very on brand Trump. But he is bucking the trend and using the CTA of Contribute vs. Donate. Now the actual contribution page is the most chaotic ecomm experience I’ve ever seen (So many fonts. Gold. Donor ticker. What is happening. So much random content. Warning: Wear safety goggles). What’s interesting is that Trump’s site has lots of policy and not a lot about running mate J.D. Vance. They do also have a camo hat. Check mate.

7. When your memes are too niche

I was struck by how niche this social post was for The Toronto Blue Jays. Maybe not even niche, but literal insider baseball. Sure, over 1,000 people liked it. Sure, I like a good Premiere or Photoshop meme as much as the next player. But if you think about it, this is the right response: “I assume this is how the Jays manage all their file systems and assets.”

And given they are 52-62 on the year and 11 games out of a Wild Card spot after selling off most of their rental players, this explains more about how the organization is run than anything else.

8. Hat of the week: Toronto Blue Jays All -Star Game 1991 Pigment Dyed Golfer Snapback Hat

This is the Canadian tuxedo of baseball hats. No, it’s the mom jeans of baseball hats? And yet, I can’t look away. No, this hat is the jean shorts of baseball hats. But it does have one of the finest All Star Game logos ever created from the 1991 game at a still fresh smelling Skydome.

9. The greatest shirt doesn’t exist…

It does actually. This is a vibe shift in a shirt. And would pair wonderfully with a 1970 Jellied Hot Dog Loaf.

Editor: We’re just posting Hot Dogs playing beach volleyball shirts now? Answer: Yes.

10. Last call: The Drink Cart Champs-Élysées

I totally thought the Olympics was much shorter. But it really does end on Sunday. For real this time. As I’ve been thinking about this week’s Drink Cart cocktail, i’m still don’t know how I feel about this bar menu design people were talking about on X. But it does feel like the coffee that rains on itself from a couple of years ago if that makes any sense. I do know that I like the looks of Bruno’s Liquors in Wisconsin. So what cocktail is a vibe shift as we say goodbye to Paris and this year’s games?

That’s easy. it’s the: Champs-Élysées. It’s a historical type sour - kind of like a step-brother of last week’s Side Car that rose in Europe during prohibition. So you swap out orange liquor for the nector of the Carthusian monks since 1737. No real backstory to this one, but it seems to have appeared in a 1930 Savoy Cocktail Book, where it was “formulated for a party of six, and calls for the somewhat mysterious ‘sweetened lemon juice.’”

That sounds pretty great. And even though I’m sharing another song to end this newsletter, you can’t not listen this one this while having this selection from the Drink Cart:

• 1.5 oz cognac

• .75 oz Green Chartreuse

• .5 oz freshly squeezed lemon juice

• .25 oz simple syrup

• 3 dashes of bitters

• Shake over ice and strain into a frozen coupe glass and a lemon twist.

And one more for the road! 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.