BBDO Sex Tape Scandal Spawns Netflix Drama Starring Baywatch Actor
A cellphone video that ended up on the internet last November featuring a couple having sex in a cubicle at Atmosphere BBDO has resurfaced to haunt the agency in the form of a Netflix competition (see video below).
The events are a reminder to companies that even the most trivial of office scandals can go viral within minutes and live forever on the internet, in increasingly weird ways.
The scandal had apparently reached its conclusion last November when the guy who recorded the couple was fired, but the couple who were doing it on company time kept their jobs.
Now the episode has inspired a “short film” that was entered in a Netflix promo contest. It was created by freelancers who have regularly worked at BBDO.
The movie is titled “Hatchet Man.” Gawker has the video. It is safe for work — the actors all remain fully clothed (see image). It stars Billy Warlock of Baywatch.
The main character is an HR type whose job it is to fire people. Late one night in the office, he sees a couple going at it and records the event on his cell phone. With the scandal all over the place, his boss orders him to find and fire the person responsible for distributing the video. Unsurprisingly, the IT department traces an email to our hero — and he’s jobless.
The original “ad agency sex tape” can be found here. It is NOT safe for work, but don’t be too disappointed — the blurry, pixelated action underlines the difference between real life sex and movie sex in the most dispiriting way possible (and the limited capabilities of cellphone video cameras).
Jim Edwards, a former managing editor of Adweek, has covered drug marketing at Brandweek for four years, and is a former Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University's business and journalism schools. Follow him on Twitter or send him an email.
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