• by Carrie Cummings , August 19, 2011

adMarketPlace's Beer Pong Olympics
Hudson Terrace
8/15/11

The floor of Newark's Continental Terminal at 6 a.m. (note: I do NOT live in New Jersey) is no place to write a fabulous party column, but, since I'm jetting off to spend a long weekend on Nantucket for another fabulous party with my friends, this is the only option. See, I'm keeping my promise to write every Friday!

On Monday, I went to adMarketplace's first Beer Pong Olympics at Hudson Terrace. When Jill Spanos, AMP's marketing gal, emailed me the invite a few weeks ago, I was a little nervous. See, I went to GW (like half of NYC under 30), and it wasn't really a beer pong kind of school. When I told Jill that I sucked at Pong, she assured me that there would also be a Flip Cup tournament. Relief washed over me: I'm great at Flip Cup, and I love relay games in general.

The event started at 7 at Hudson Terrace. I got there early with my plus-one, Caroline Harrison, to scope the place out. It was held on the top floor and instead of walls, there were windows that let you look over the city. I felt like it was a little too nice for a Beer Pong tournament, but AMP's classy like that.

Shortly after I arrived, swarms of search marketing folks started flowing in and I thought it would be wise to make my way to the bar and grab some beer before the lines got outrageous. The crowd was fratty, something that takes getting used to and always surprises me when I'm around marketing people. They're usually nice, though.

I ran into Avi Slavin, business director at AMP and Adam Epstein, AMP's president, who were excited and maybe a little nervous about the event. Rightly so. Jill got on a megaphone and tried to round the teams up to take photos together. It was like herding cats. People were drinking, talking, fist-pumping, etc. and could barely follow directions. It was fine for me, though, because it gave me time to check out the teams and the set-up.

Traditional bar food was provided - mini burgers, wings, fries. But they were exceptional - something that I've come to expect from AMP after having covered their Spring Agency Dinner which I'm already looking forward to. Anyway, there were too many teams to keep track of and the tournament lasted three hours!

I began to make the rounds to mingle with players and be journalisty,  and came upon a table right next to the bar. Just before I was about to introduce myself as a journalist from MediaPost, I asked the blonde girl in the blue striped dress from Digitas if she was playing at the table, to which she replied, "Um, yeah, this table is taken for a while," with a smack of distain on her cheaply glossed lips.

 I was gobsmacked. Who talks to people like that? Was she raised in a barn? I was trying to talk to her for this column! I was speechless. I backed away. Caroline was laughing and I was still in shock. So, I took out my camera and started snapping unflattering pictures of her that I planned to paste all over this column in an act of childish vengeance. She kind of took the wind out of my sails and I didn't really recover fully enough to be my usual chatty self. I hung around the bar and sneered for another 20 minutes while anger-eating the delicious fries. 

Other than the Digitas philistine, the party was fantastic, per usual. AMP knows what they're doing and how to thank their agency clients, so I'm not surprised. See you in the fall for the Agency Dinner!

Thanks to Florian Koenigsberger for the photos.

As always, send your hate mail and party invites to carrie@mediapost.com.