Ad Game

 Don Draper is alive and well, and he's working for A&W. 

If neither of those names ring a bell for you, Don was a fictional ad executive. He once pitched a campaign to Hershey's Chocolate based on his experiences growing up in a whorehouse. They bought it. At the end of the last season, a worn and weary Don Draper had retreated to a hilltop in northern California to meditate and find his moral center, missing all those years. In the midst of his quiet reverie, he arrived at what would become the "Buy The World A Coke" ad. No matter how deep the despair, Don could sell. 

As for A&W, you may not remember their frosty mugs of root beer or carhop service, but you may be familiar with the odd hybrid fast food experiments seen on America's urban landscape, the ones that are crammed into one side of a Kentucky Fried Chicken stand. That frosty mug of root beer would be great for washing down one of those mix in bowls of chicken bits and potato and who knows what else. 

What I am suggesting here is that Don and A&W need each other. It has been more than fifty years since that Coke ad and I'll take a quick show of hands to see how many of you have darkened the door of an A&W in the past decade. 

But now I'm interested. In the wake of the announcement that M&Ms were melting their spokescandies, not in our hearts, but in their hands. The hubbub created by this bit of marketing and the questions it raised did nothing but increase the buzz about those little bits of candy-covered chocolate. This is where Don Draper steps in. He tells A&W he has a surefire way to bring a laser focus back to their root beer stands: Mirror the ad from Mars Candy Company, but focus on their spokesbear, who it seems has been going without pants for the entire time he has worked promoting their business. Rather than going to the drastic measures of Mars, A&W decided they would have their bear start wearing something besides a jaunty cap and a nice orange sweater. 

Had anyone else noticed that the bear was bare down there? Not even Young Tucker Carlson had noticed this wardrobe omission. And now, the world will see this wrong righted. Children will continue to go hungry. The debt ceiling will continue to be argued. The war in Ukraine rages on. But the mascot to a fast food restaurant you hadn't thought of maybe in forever will now be fully clothed. 

Thank you, Don Draper, wherever you are.