• by Kelly Samardak , September 15, 2008

Buddy Media "Back To School Bash!", Buddy Media Offices, New York
September 10, 2008

Just as I sat down to write this in my "what the heck, this is September" sweat, I opened a package on my desk from Buddy Media! So cute, inside was a little schoolish case with a calculator (for you futuristic types, this is that thing with the numbers on it that enabled you to add, subtract, multiple, divide, and sometimes get percentages and square roots! And! Wonder of all wonders, it did not exist in your cellphone! Zowwee!), rulers, sticky notes, and the "Social Season Survival Kit." I won't go into those details yet, but I'll bet your chances of social survival are greater if you attended the Buddy Media "Back to School Bash!" like I did.

I entered the old building complete with its creaky old elevator and slowly climbed to the third floor. When the elevator opened I could hear the clinking of glasses, the hum of Buddy Media's guests, and I could smell something familiar... what was it? Yay! Cocktail wieners! The first person I ran into was Joe Ciarallo, PR dude for Horn Group as well as co-editor over at mediabistro's PRNewser -- a name that makes me think Joe should always be wearing his knickers and a cap, possibly dancing. Before I could wrap my sausage-like fingers around a mug of green Buddy juice, Joe swung me around the room, introducing me to the crew.

Michael Lazerow, Chairman & CEO, Buddy Media, and Kass Savarese Lazerow, COO, Buddy Media, are a warm and goofy couple as well as the founders. Really, they're serial entrepreneurs in crime, with this being their fourth company together.  Abby Lauterbach, Buddy Media Project Manager and evangelist, is thrilled to have been in at the ground floor, seeing Buddy Media start just one year ago with about six people and now they're running with 25 and growing. PS, Abby used to baby-sit for the Lazerows.

While skittering around the room and dumping tuna tartare into my mouth (they were in these crunchy little cups!) with quickness, I bumped into the nerd herd, spearheaded by Adam Hirsch, Chief Operations Officer, Mashable. He was talking Twitter with Brett Petersel, Events Director, Mashable, who tweeted as they talked. They were joined by the boisterous and celebrity-posing expert, Jono Hart, Director, Sales & Business Development on the West Coast for Buddy Media. 

In the narrow hallway by the real hot spot of the party, the bathroom, I ran into Scott Kolber, SVP, Business Development for Linkstorm. Sounds like a strange place to start a conversation, I know, but I've had some pretty scintillating chats outside the loo. They have to be kept short, so getting to the point is a necessity. I'm going to invent the "toilet pitch," which will compete with the elevator pitch in popularity. I think there's a much bigger sense of urgency with the toilet than the elevator, don't you?

My posse for the night consisted of Matt Van Hoven, Agency Spy, Ciarallo, and Gail Hilton, Director of Sales and Marketing, Qwikker. We watched winner after winner run up to claim their various raffle booty, including a Wii! Jealousy ensued.  I abandoned them for another glass of vino, which is where I ran into Carl Kiesel clad in a seersucker suit. "F*** those rules" is what he had to say about fashion ninnies dictating the moratorium on seersucker after Labor Day - and the same goes for white. "They needed someone to dapper up the party, which is why they invited me," he smiled, vogueing away from me. 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the smaller companies always feel more genuinely celebratory, appreciative, the least pretentious and false, and really, just more fun at parties. But I'm not stupid (or, bubbleheaded, was it? That was a good piece of feedback I got on one of my first posts -- I think it was attached to "blather" which I'll totally own), I'm sure that by the time these little startups with big hearts go through the ringer of favors and writers and pitches and Empire State Building-sized bumps in the road, they end up being more guarded at parties, maybe a little tighter with the guest list, and more serious at their own party -- lest they get outed in a blog for doing the worm in front of the ping-pong table.

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