ASSME, A New Organization for the Unemployed Media Elite

Advertising Age’s Nat Ives reports this happy holiday news: that an organization calling itself ASSME (yes, ASSME), is having a holiday party on Wednesday night at a Manhattan bar that, fittingly, is an homage to the 1920s.

ASSME has nothing to do with ASME,  the American Society of Magazine Editors; that’s a completely different organization, for employed people. No, ASSME is The American Society of Shit-Canned Media Elites, a group that is growing in number. Also according to Ad Age, media companies have let go 30,000 people in the recession, and that figure doesn’t count this week’s newly unemployed which include a healthy contingent from Newsweek.

If you read the fine print on the invitation, you’ll note that ASSME casts a wide net — laid-off advertising execs are also invited. That may also explain why the organization actually has a sponsor, p.i.n.k. vodka (an allusion to pink slips perhaps?), which will be giving away free drinks from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m.

I asked ASME chief executive Sid Holt (who is also a former boss) what he thought of all this. He replied, in part, that he hoped every laid off media elite would “be able to wangle themselves a vodka sponsorship.”