The Drink Cart:Emotional Support Baseball
This week we watched baseball, thought about the future of sports and spent a few hours in the marketing offices of Agency Grateau on Netflix.
Dear Drink Carters. Somehow it really is September now. I liked this thought from someone I follow, “A reminder that fall does not start til late September, making September the best month because it is mostly summer (the best season), a dash of fall (the second best season), but both WITH FOOTBALL.”
I might swap in pennant drive baseball for the football, but that’s just me. And adding this wonderful baseball on film montage. Spoiler alert, the hat of the week is very on trend with this intro and that I needed some emotional sport baseball after last week.
Last week’s newsletter was tough to write, so we’re keeping it easy, breezy and beautiful this week:
By going through this season of Emily In Paris
Jumping into future of sports, responsible gaming ads and how to cringe
Sharing our playoff hat pick and some notes on the hobby of card collecting
And serving up the Kir Royale on the cart
1. Emily In Paris - Season 4 Part I Thoughts - Love is in the Air
First things first. I watch Emily in Paris. Don’t judge. You can skip past these very serious thoughts on the marketing in the show as the show is wild. Paris is so hot right now after the Olympics, so just seeing more shots of the city makes me want to return again. I come for the Paris scenery, I stay for the gob-smackingly silly marketing. Oui.
This is exactly how you should look when you just pitch the hell out of a campaign featuring your coworker and the tagline of “Love is in the Air”. My favourite is that they talk about testing it but that testing was just about which couple should be the hero in a balloon. I also don’t even understand the art direction of the key frame here - and why would they be pitching an english song from 1978?
I still can’t remember what they are even selling with this AMI campaign (is it a balloon company?) or what media buy would be that simply included OOH in New York, Paris and Seoul along with sponsorship at the French open - and bravo for featuring this iconic sports venue. But this is where things go sideways as Emily has broken up with her boyfriend also featured in the ad. Whoops!
As Vulture notes to level it up our fearless marketing pro, “Emily does a beautiful cultural exchange wherein she teaches the French about the concept of the kiss cam.” But fear not, because she’s not sure if said boyfriend will show up, she prepares a completely off brand “very cool” virtual reality avatar of them kissing to be played at Roland Garros? Emily Cooper you have lost your damn mind girl. Spoiler alert: He shows up. Lame.
2. Emily In Paris - Season 4 Part 1 - Faux Scavenger Hunts
The hits keep coming for Agency Grateau. It would appear that the agency lacks even the most basic of tools - they didn’t make any documentation for a luncheon activation for luxury jewellery brand Boucheron? Like any great handover at agencies when someone leaves, they don’t know whats going on. No Google Docs? Impossible! Mon Dieu!
The client asks, “Is there even a filter?” Does Agency Grateau not know this is the brand’s 20th anniversary when they ask about innovation and social media for the luxury brand? Oh, here we go. Luc the account guy who couldn’t even get the brand’s logo up on screen does his best Emily impression and proposes a scavenger hunt where contestants will never find the expensive necklace in some sort of deeply improper end run around any rules and regulations. I am beginning to think that Agency Grateau might need a legal department or good lawyer after this season.
3.Emily In Paris - Season 4 Part 1 - Heartbreak & Sober Curiosity
We’re deep into episode three, and If I told you that the featured ad campaign was an excuse for an over the top influencer-invited masquerade ball (of course you guessed it: #heartbreakball), you would never believe me. But don’t worry the clients look at you like this when you pitch this. Incredible vibes.
In the EIP Universe this is a campaign for a perfume collab where the bottle comes pre-cracked. And guess what - leaving no stone unturned, you can actually buy a crystal version of this for the low price of $490 to remember this campaign for all your years.
As if this wasn’t enough they also have another campaign for their Champagne client who is launching a new canned Kir Royales. There is something so lame about turning the beautiful Kir into a canned ready to drink cocktail. But here we are. Again, we turn to Vulture for this analysis: “Emily is on a mission to ruin every part of French culture that she can touch. Her latest target: the happy, steady consumption of alcohol. What if Kir Royale had a nonalcoholic option? Sylvie says, ‘Sobriety is the antithesis of French culture.’”
Yes queen! Say what you will about her agency, but Sylvie is the person you want to work for - I’ll bet the Agency Grateau Drink Cart is legendary. No thanks to you, Cooper.
4. Emily In Paris - Season 4 Part 1 - Living in the ‘Gray’ Area
If you managed to make it to the forth episode of this season, you get to witness an agency meeting with a shampoo brand for older women. Emily reviewed the brief and jumps in right off the top with just blurting out Cindy Lauper and letting your True Colours shine through. Again with an English song? Is Agency Grateau a secret plant agency for english and North American culture? The client is not impressed and wants something deeper. Not exactly in Emily’s wheelhouse.
And here’s where Agency Grateau’s fearless leader Sylvie says “just give us a couple of days and we’ll come back to you with some ideas.” Bold, no talk of SOWs or if they even have time. Flash forward to the few days, “This campaign is not about age, it’s about attitude.” Emily then casually lands the line about “living in the gray area” and somehow she weaves in her own experience of Parisian apartment rooftop sex and her living with the ambiguity of her lover living with his ex and her new girlfriend.
Speaking of grey areas, the final episode of this slog of a first half of the season finds Emily and Agency Grateau failing to do any due diligence on a new skin care brand fresh in from London wanting a French marketing agency. As you do.
The moisturizing product is wild and makes you look like you just came out of the womb. How did they not want to rebrand the awful sounding idea of “Glass Skin”? Of course on the precipice of knocking another marketing problem out of the park by getting the product in stores, they learn that it was featured as a lubricant on the French equivalent of Shark Tank called Fox’s Lair - that would be a great Netflix spin off by the way.
This is first page Google type information. And they just go with it. Classic Emily in Paris. Can’t wait for the next drop of episodes next week. I think.
5. Now for something completely different, the future of watching sports
This new sports bar format with full screen video of the game is pretty cool. I’m not sure it would be as good as watching the game live, so I’m not sure if they will be everywhere - but it is an indication of the future of sports. Speaking of which, I lucked out with tickets to a game this week which included access to one of the new clubs at Rogers Center.
The Blueprint Club is under the stands for fans sitting on certain sections. The private club gives you free food included and a real bar that is open for up to an hour after the game. So not only do you get a shrimp cocktail, crab legs, build your own charcuterie or roast beef in addition to hot dogs and chicken strips, but you can grab your own snacks. it was overwhelming and almost like a fever dream. But I think it now makes sense that you can pay random players 10 million a year when you are charging season ticket holders prices that include private members clubs like this. Gone are the days of just getting by with a random ticket and a hot dog.
6. Responsible Gambling ads
We have done so much gambling advertising at our Agency over the years, I keep a close watch on everything. So when this new ad for one of the infinite brands operating now in Ontario, Bet99, was being shared around in our Slack, I took a closer look.
I think it is disingenuous to say that you are doing this responsible gaming ad because as their in-house creative director tells Strategy “we felt it imperative that we hit upon all touch points to communicate the importance of gambling responsibly.” How you can say that knowing the article will say, in this case the previous few paragraphs, that this is because it is the only way to use a celebrity in your ads. If it wasn’t they wouldn’t have done an ad like this. They are using this to get people to gamble, don’t tell me otherwise.
7. This is how you do cringevertising
This is a pretty great example of brand understanding both what’s happening in social and executing on it perfectly. I think I said to some friends over the weekend that brands should just not jump on trends. But I like just how it owns everything about this cringe mockery.
8. Hat of the week: My Playoff Team for 2024
Since I had the viewing pleasure of seeing two Blue Jays vs. Phillies games this week on beautiful fall evenings and afternoons, I needed to draw inspiration from that. It’s fall so this fall looking Calle Ocho Phillies hat featuring a 1966 All-Star Game patch really just spoke to me (side note: this Twins version also caught my eye). Might have been the onslaught of Kyle Schwarber home runs over the two games. He hit 4 including two lead off home runs. Might have been that the Blue Jays are not going to see the post-season. The Phillies have my vibe.
9. The Hobby of Collecting
Sports Cards are a $1 billion business. In the last few weeks, Fanatics which owns Topps the number one maker of sports cards launched their first brand awareness spot.
I do fully agree with Fanatics Collectables Chief Marketing Officer Ken Turner, “Our objective is to elevate the collecting experience. This starts with a focus on the collector and the recognition that collections and, in fact, the journey of collecting itself, has value.”
The ad is beautiful, but I’ll be picky that in the spot the kid pulls a card and puts it on top of his collection and never gets another card again? And just leaves it in an old box forever? I also hate that it is about the chase of a rarer parallel card. Is it that that has the meaning, or that he really loves Ohtani. Fanatics doesn’t want the type of collector who ever stops collecting - they want collectors who will drop hundreds and hundreds of dollars every year chasing an ever increasing amount of impossible to get numbered, rare and short run prints. Back in the day, you could get maybe a few cards each year of your favourite player, now each player there are dozens of versions, drops, and harder to get stuff. It’s not the same hobby anymore. Or I’m really getting “Get off my lawn” old.
Last call: The Drink Cart Kir Royale
Since we’re on the Paris train again, and to smite Emily Cooper, we’re doing the real Kir Royale. History time. The Kir Royale is an off shoot of the Kir - where you add Cassis to white wine from burgundy. And if you try to pull off the Royale with sparkling wine and some Chambord that you had leftover from last week, I hate to break it to you but that is just a Kir Imperial. You’ve been warned.
The story goes that the Nazi’s took so much French red wine during World War II that the French invented the Resistance Cocktail - or Kir. Named for Felix Kir, a Catholic priest and member of the French resistance they combined Creme de Cassis with local white wine to make a cocktail that looked like Burgundy red wine. Truthfully there were other iterations of this dating back to the 19th century.
Here’s my take:
3/4 oz Cassis
Champagne
Lemon Twist
And just to mix it up - since your agency may or may not have flutes, just make this in a rocks glass.
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):
What classic cocktail would be your number 1 draft pick? For inspiration, listen to the VinePair podcast this week and see how the Daiquiri went #1. The old fashioned went 3rd? Shocking.
Brat summer is over. Discuss.
Are Japanese ads the best? Example submission for review.
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.
I liked that Topps ad. And the “no” at the end was perfect.
So what you are saying is that Emily in Paris season 4 is basically Mad Men for Gen Z. Right?