It’s been a good while since we’ve heard a tale of drunken agency hijinks, hasn’t it? Well, according to one tipster, an alleged brawl broke out from a booze-soaked evening–not at some agency party, mind you, but after just another round of late-night imbibing at the office. As is the norm with blind items, we’ll leave the incriminating names/associations out and leave the guessing game to you. Time to play Mad Libs again, and oh yes, it’s a geek fight, folks.

“Last Friday [ed: meaning April 27] in the _______ office at _________, two programmers got into a brawl when they were drinking late at work.  One of the programmers hit the other with a champagne bottle causing  police to be called and 17 stitches and staples to be administered to victim.  The assailant wrote an email over the weekend assuming he was fired and did not even come to work.  He was terminated on Monday.  Police are reviewing case for criminal prosecution.  Guess disagreements with alcohol get ugly at the ____________ office.  I do not work there but numerous people I know have confirmed this story.  ________ is the attacker and _______ was the victim apparently.  You can’t make this up…”

It’s been well over a month since our last blind item, folks. So, yet again, let’s dust off the beast with a brief comment that seems to echo a familiar theme at agencies you may know. Yes, it’s generic, but like always, roll the dice and have at it if you’d like. We kept it verbatim, just the way you like it.

“_______ is in way over it’s head. Super understaffed and everyone hates CCO ___________. Digital talent especially is horrified to see what’s up once they’re hired. I’d be very, very worried if I were a______ client with a big digital media buy, because if it’s not on TV, ______ still doesn’t give a shit.”

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It‘s been a few weeks since we boarded the Blind Item train, so let’s dust things off by regaling you with a tale sent verbatim from a source familiar with the matter. It must have been a hard knock life for this particular person in the agency PR community. Read on and place your bets.

Which New York agency flack got humiliatingly relegated to chauffeur duties in Vegas for the entire week of CES, literally idling at execs/clients’ beck ‘n’ call all day/every day, when his multi-billion dollar media agency masters proved too cheap to shell out for a driver even as they stayed and ate at some of Sin City’s most expensive hotels and restaurants?  But the week wasn’t completely about degradation: the Powers-That-Be did deign to permit said flack to attend the agency’s low-rent party. Unfortunately, nobody took the initiative to order drink clients’ products as party beverages.  So the flack spent the night playing errand boy to amend that oversight as well.  You wonder why he came back….a media masochist?

It’s been a few months since we’ve visited the old blind item section, so let’s dust it off, shall we? Spies are telling us it’s true that a full-service, NYC-based agency fired its entire tech team recently. From what we hear, this is the second time that this has occurred at said agency, though your guess is as good as ours as to which one it actually is. Fire away, people.

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Ok folks, here’s our weekly mailbag and it’s time to play yet another guessing game. This is interesting.

“_____ agencies, mostly ___ and _____ [-based], are invited to pitch for _______.  3 weeks, time, travel and $$$$ invested by ____ agencies. here is the winner: “The business from the 2011 ___________ RFP event has been awarded to _________.”

Here’s a hint: It’s for digital biz and it’s not from NYC.

Two blind items in a week? Yep, two blind items in a week, and this one kinda merited it. We know, we know, this could almost apply to any agency, but seriously, we believe you can narrow it down. Have fun with more mad libs, folks. The person who sent us this apparently loves ellipsis as well.

“The _____ ____  is about to go under: IN an act of clemency, ________ promoted ______ and _________ to Co-Presidents of the group that has lost 75% of its staff in the last year. An exodus caused by a toxic work environment. The group has also lost ________, _____, _____ digital work and the rest of the account (media) is expected to go soon. _____ is on the edge, having just hired several agency folks and then shooting a TV spot without the shop…_____ is shopping around and the _________ [account] is rumored to be interested in working with ______ at _____….”

So, here we go again, revving up the old Blind Item category out of nowhere. A handful of tips within one week’s time from seemingly different sources makes us go hmmm (h/t C+C Music Factory). Anyhow, there’s this certain automaker and this certain agency which are having their difficulties. We’ve even been told that there might be an account review in the coming weeks. Here you go, gang, have at it with some Mad Libs:

“Big shakeup on the ______ business.  CEO _______ has been moved off the brand pending results of the financial and accounting audit that the agency ________ is undergoing.  CEO of the agency ________ is moving items of the agency building and UHaul trucks were there all weekend.  Some very shady things were going on in the accounting and billing processes and ________ legal has jumped in.”

It’s been about three weeks, give or take, since the latest Summer’s Eve effort was pulled from the airwaves and Stan Richards, founder and namesake of the Richards Group, which was behind the brand’s “Hail to the V” campaign, had this to say to Adweek: “After listening to thousands of women say they want straight-talk and lighthearted communication on a historically-uncomfortable topic, Summer’s Eve gave us license to be bold, irreverent and celebratory across a multitude of mediums and to different audiences. We are surprised that some have found the online videos racially stereotypical.”

Well, if one tipster’s scoop is accurate, Richards Group shouldn’t have been so surprised considering that the campaign seemed doomed well before launch. Read on:

“Internally the ad is not talked about. The client never liked the ad and was basically talked into buying the idea by two untouchable CD’s at the agency. The ad was tested in focus groups and did terrible, and the client was again, pressured to run with it. The client did, and to absolutely terrible results. Granted it’s a difficult product, but for obvious reasons there has been a huge backlash to the campaign labeling it from sexist to racist and everything in between. [Because] of stupid shit like this, clients get scared and never want to take risks. Because after trusting irresponsible creatives, they get burned.”

Will the lesson be learned? Hmm, considering Summer’s Eve’s track record, we’re highly skeptical.

We’re going to make this short and sweet but yesterday we were reached by a senior art director at a well-known ad agency who took issue with a project manager about a certain script. The end result? He/she was shown the door and was fired within 24 hours. We’ll give you a one vague hint: The agency is based in the Northeast. We will now let you roll the dice and take a guess.

Update: This story is getting stranger as we received a tip from someone claiming to be said art director who said they in fact did not contact us regarding this blind item. We’ll dig into this.

Time for you and I to play a Thursday guessing game as we’ve been trying to dig deeper info on a couple of tips received last night that said simply, “2 VPs gone from Huge.” Well, we received confirmation from the agency that a couple of senior folks who worked on the client services side and touched multiple accounts have indeed left the agency within the last week Since HUGE’s policy is not to comment specifically on individuals (see: Nick McGlynn), we guess it’s high time for a blind item.

If you have more info, give us a shout but we’ll keep digging around. In the meantime, HUGE sent us this quote that doesn’t really fill in the blanks, but if you like somewhat vague feedback, here you go:

“In the last six months or so we’ve added nearly a hundred people to the agency. The vast majority of people who come here stay, but it’s not exactly news in this industry that sometimes people move on for all sorts of reasons. Anyone who gets hired at HUGE has to be incredibly smart and out of respect for all our employees we don’t comment on the details when things don’t work out.”