If you've been hungering for a totally insane office lawsuit ever since the Knicks lawsuit case ended, prepare to be sated: A former senior VP-group creative director of ad agency Dentsu is suing his former employer for a hostile work environment that included demands he go to a brothel and a "crotch shot" photographs of women including tennis star Maria Sharapova. more ›

Holy home run. Or is that holy Star Jones-style chutzpah? A couple has managed to land about $80,000 worth of sponsorships for their wedding at a Brooklyn Cyclones home game. Flowers are covered by 1800Flowers, cake by Grandma's Secrets in Harlem, Diageo will create a special wedding drink, and more. Caroline Fisher, a radio station sales manager marrying marketing consultant Dave Kerpen, told Ad Age, "It was an idea that both met our needs romantically in terms of getting married on the field and at a baseball stadium, which we love, and simultaneously doing what we love, which is putting together promotions and selling them." Well, we can only guess that the sponsors will call them repeatedly over their honeymoon to ask them about make-goods. The Fisher-Kerpen nuptials will be on July 8, at home plate when the game ends - and Tien Mao is probably available for a wedding cake eating contest. more ›

Ad Age decides to freak out managers everywhere with an article that leads with "U.S. workers in 2005 will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs." Oh, boo-hoo: That's spread across 35 million workers, which means 3.5 hours a WEEK is spent reading blogs. Big deal: Blogging is the new talking on the phone or standing at the water cooler. While there are various statistics that claim that only 25% of blog reading directly relates to work, we always thought that being an interesting person who could find ways to handle a drudgery of a job was acceptable. Why can't the American worker take advantage on the increased productivity that a Microsoft Office suite gives us by reading some blogs? We're not talking writing Jack-Sawyer Lost fan-fic, for crying out loud. Old media is so mean - they refuse to consider blogs sources of news! more ›

Cemusa, a Spanish outdoor firm, has won the $1 billion contract from the Department of Transportation to sell ads on New York City's street furniture. Ad Age calls Cemusa "little known," when compared with "outdoor giants" JC Deceaux and Van Wagner. Cemusa says 100 new jobs will be created (unclear how many will be in NYC) and Ad Age reports that Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners, the firm that designed the new Fulton Street Transit Center, will be charged with designing new street furniture that will showcase the advertising. Deceaux, a French firm, was the early frontrunner as it donated money to the NYC 2012 bid, but Gothamist guesses when that fell apart, all bets were off. This will be a 20 year contract, and what we'd like to see is Cemusa asking the public to give our input on possible street furniture (we may not be happy about it, but at least it can work with our lives). more ›

It's like Kinsey meets Madison Avenue! Ad Age reports that ad agency BBDO has completed a survey that shows 14% of cell phone users have "stopped in the middle of a sex act to answer a ringing wireless device." For some country specific stats, the Germany and Spain led with 22% of those surveyed stopping sex to answer the cell, while only 7% Italy's cell phone users would answer. The US is slightly above average, with 15% stopping sex to answer the phone. The survey was only within BBDO's direct marketing network, so agency executives could explain to clients, "You see, people love to feel important and answer their phones - let's do that text messaging campaign!" No word if Publicis, the agency behind the T-Mobile Sidekick ads with Snoop, Paris Hilton, Jeffrey Tambor, and other celebs, has done a similar survey. more ›

- And the GOP and Democrats are trying to use NYC symbolism to their advantage for the election this fall. Brother, Gothamist would rather they deal with our terror funding now and stop using NYC as a pawn. When NYC gets used, we want to have a little fun, at least.
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Ad Age coos over what they think is the most successful product placement this summer: Absolut Vodka's critical role in a Sex and the City plot line between Kim Cattrall and Jason Lewis. No money changed hands, which doesn't surprise Gothamist - you cannot buy publicity like this. Patrick O'Neill, creative director of TBWA/Chiat Day, created the ad, and was "inspired" by seminal pin-up posters of "Farrah Fawcett in a swimsuit and Burt Reynolds on a shaggy rug." Also, TBWA "." Love handles! Jason Lewis has love handles? They must be imaginary ones. more ›

for getting its daily information. Other tidbits: more ›

This Ad Age article may be about how Motorola used marketing (and using it early on in product development) to improve its market share, but what Gothamist will take away from it is this Jonah Bloom line: "How many marketers at other companies have no such influence but are instead left to simply put the lipstick on the pig?" God, we love that. "Man, I can't blog that, it'd be putting lipstick on the pig." more ›

On yesterday's Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz covered "The Crisis at the Times" - the fallout from the Jayson Blair fiasco. Among his guests were Times columnist Clyde Haberman, Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker, and the NY Post's media reporter, Keith Kelly. more ›

A nice kickback from the TriBeCa Film Festival is the American Express commercial with Martin Scorsese in it. As Jason Gay of the Observer succinctly describes it: more ›

Super Bowl Commercials SuperBowl-Ads.com, will be cool once they get their act together, because it'll have all the ads and polls, but for now, it sucks.
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See the new Coke commercials. more ›