Hasta La Creative!

Yesterday, MediaPost ran a story about a lawsuit recently filed against the DDB organization and its parent company Omnicom. The post noted that the suit accuses the agency’s Chief Digital Officer Joe Cianciotto of harassing a plaintiff “described only as a gay man with HIV” over an unspecified period of time and claims damages exceeding $20 million.

According to that story, the suit makes various claims against Cianciotto, who was promoted to the CDO position in 2013 after nearly a decade with the agency. In summary, the plaintiff alleges that he was “emotionally and physically paralyzed with fear as a gay man being discriminated by his own supervisor,” and the suit also names DDB New York CEO Chris Brown (who accepted that position nearly a year ago) and DDB Chief Executive Peter Hempel, claiming that they failed to respond to earlier complaints despite the fact that the plaintiff allegedly underwent “severe emotional distress.”

An agency spokesperson has provided us with a response to the suit, noting one major inaccuracy in the original story: while MediaPost calls the plaintiff “a former creative director,” he is in fact still employed by the DDB organization. The suit claims that DDB responded to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission’s “right to sue letter,” which allowed the lawsuit to proceed, by asking the plaintiff to resign, but the individual’s legal representatives now claim that this request came “without any basis regarding [the plaintiff’s] work performance.”

DDB’s response is that this all happened years ago, that the organization investigated the complaints when they were originally made, and that the plaintiff has no cause to sue his employer.

The official statement from a DDB spokesperson:

“The alleged conduct in this complaint occurred years ago and the employee who filed the lawsuit did not previously file a complaint with DDB about any of the actions cited and he remains employed by DDB.  We do not believe the lawsuit has merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously.  DDB is committed to providing a comfortable and positive work environment for all of its employees.  All claims of harassment – of any type – are fully investigated and appropriate corrective action is taken if company policies have been violated.”

Updates as they come in.