• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, October 19, 2007

Since MediaVest promotes itself as a "full-service media specialist company offering brand-building results," onlookers collectively wondered just which brand Josh Drimmer was building when he recently strolled naked around New York's Times Square. The 26-year-old MediaVest worker first wore just one black sock--leading to speculation that MediaVest had picked up the Gold Toe or Thorlos accounts--but then he stripped down to his altogether. Industry insiders assumed he would have key MediaVest client brands strategically tattooed on his personhood, but that failed to be the case. The lad later told the press from a hospital bed at Bellevue that he simply "had a bad day."

Nevertheless, the incident kicked off a debate among journalists who pondered whether the New York Post photographer, who held back to snap pix of the naked Yale graduate rather than intercede to prevent onlookers from being offended, acted in a professional manner. The National Press Photographers Association Code of Ethics states: "While photographing subjects do not intentionally contribute to, alter, or seek to alter or influence events."

"I brought my kids to New York to see the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, not some guy's putz," one angry tourist might have told Over the Line. "I paid a hundred bucks a ticket to see "The Lion King," and now all my kids will tell their friends back in Shaker Heights is that they saw a guy walking around Times Square nude. Did I tell you the hotel was $300 a night?"

"Some day we will be at a fire or a car accident and we will be called upon to put the camera down and help," John Long, Ethics Co-Chair and Past President of the National Press Photographers Association, has said. "Here is the principle that works for me. It is not a popular one and it is one that many journalists disagree with, but it allows me to sleep at night. If you have placed yourself in the position where you can help, you are morally obligated to help. I do not ask you to agree with me. I just want you to think about this and be prepared: at what point do you put the camera down and help? At what point does your humanity become more important than your journalism?"

Humanity indeed.

The American Family Association, a nonprofit organization that promotes conservative Christian values, has announced it will organize a boycott--the AFA's 3,457th--of all the products that use MediaVest as an agency. "We believe in holding accountable the companies... attacking traditional family values," says AFA's founder and Chairman Rev. Donald E. Wildmon.

Since MediaVest brands include Coke, Wal-Mart, Kraft and Wendy's, essential components of the daily lives of AFA members, the boycott is not expected to have much of an economic impact.

"You know, I was having a pretty good day," MediaVest PR guy Sam Biederman could have told Over the Line. "I was just about to do a 360-degree performance review, I kept the agency off Page Six for nearly four months, and I was about to get Bill Tucker profiled in Crain's New York Business. Then Drimmer has to take his John Thomas for a walk. My mother was right--I should have gone to law school."

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