A TechCrunch post grabbed my attention this week. It covered Elon Musk’s xAI launch of Grok 4. Just when you thought the AI hype cycle couldn’t get more feverish, along comes a chatbot so clever it consults its own maker, Elon Musk, before answering controversial questions. A machine with parental dependency. Imagine your toaster refusing to brown the bread until it’s cleared the shade with the CEO of the electricity board.This isn’t progress. It’s narcissism at scale.Tech bros that strange, emotionally barren tribe of hyper-wealthy savants continue to hammer the fast-forward button on the most consequential technology since the atom…

No kiss. Just a lingering hug. Nevertheless, your CEO and HR boss are caught on camera at a Coldplay concert. But in the court of public opinion, body language is guilty until proven otherwise. Cue peak Schadenfreude. And just like that, your obscure company becomes the star of a scandal no one cast you in. Suddenly, you’re trending, not for your work, but for a drama not of your design. An omnishambles meets a global clusterf**k.Most brands freeze in this moment. Panic mode. Damage control.The usual defensive reflexes from the in-house PR wrangler, cautious statements, tight lips, and the faint…

From a creaking Dutch boarding house, stitched together with love, oddity, and the faded dreams of creatives, I’ve been watching Jeff Bezos float deeper into his own irony-sodden oblivion.Here at Le Domaine du Meunier, an ex-mill reborn by the mad brilliance of Ariane van Tuyll and her husband Coen, two Amsterdam visionaries who clearly value soul over spectacle, everything breathes with human touch. Pinball machines hum, lotus flowers grow in tubs of water in the garden, paint peels with dignity. It’s a home that embraces imperfection, a refuge from the algorithmic tyranny of the present. And it stands in delicious…

Damn. I’m about to commit the cardinal sin. I just can’t help it. My feed is flooded with noise from Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. I know I shouldn’t cast any stones but screw it, here goes. Let’s talk about advertising.So we’re coming to the end of Cannes Lions week, the annual migration of adland’s elite to the Croisette, where creativity is toasted, trophies are handed out like hors d’oeuvres, and everyone pretends this still matters.Sir John Hegarty one of the great wise men, offered a quiet provocation: “Creativity is losing its value.” And there’s no better place to witness…

In a world buckling under chaos, spectacle, and weaponised noise, one truth cuts through: the most dangerous weapon today isn’t an AI weaponised drone. It’s language.Not the kind of 20th-century lingua franca of international relations that built bridges. The type that now distorts, seduces, and detonates. Language stripped of nuance, engineered for dominance in a factory with Orwellian practices and Silicon Valley branding. It doesn’t explain the world, it edits it. Curates it. Wraps it in performance. And we’re so desensitised by this that we’re casually scrolling through the apocalypse.Traditional media, with all its flaws, has been bulldozed by a rage…

Robert Jenrick’s viral vigilante PR stunt on the London Underground – chasing fare dodgers like an undernourished Batman with a Westminster lanyard wasn’t law enforcement, but rather low-rent theatre. A self-shot PR spectacle staged in the fading light of relevance.This was really a display of political desperation to shake the nation out of its ennui. Because while Jenrick was playing Marvel cosplay on the Jubilee Line, his party has been outflanked and out-fantasised by Reform. The Conservatives aren’t simply losing the argument; like an elderly walrus being shuffled off an arctic cliff edge, they’re losing their place in the political spectrum.Reform…

And so, it ends. The reign of the Prince of Match of the Day is over, not with scandal or disgrace, but with something far more British: moral fatigue.Gary Lineker’s journey from national treasure to divisive conscientious objector is a parable of our times, where virtue, fame, and the cultish contradictions of the BBC collide. Once the nation’s most palatable voice, he’s become a lightning rod for a culture that mistrusts saints as much as it crucifies sinners.His career was forged by the BBC, making him not just a presenter but public property; a salaried embodiment of Middle England values….

I had an epiphany on Tuesday night, sitting in a packed room at Shoreditch House full of young, switched-on, emotionally articulate souls: scarred, and staring into the algorithmic abyss. They weren’t there for influencer bollocks. They came because the event’s subject mattered. I listened and I learned something.They came to hear Rosie Viva talk about her memoir, Completely Normal and Totally Fine—a title laced with irony, because the world she describes is anything but normal, and certainly not fine.Full disclosure: I’ve known Rosie since she was a kid. She went to school with my boys. This isn’t detached commentary from…

There’s a strange satisfaction in watching the mighty McDonald’s get nibbled at by a northern bakery that once sold four sausage rolls for a quid. Greggs vs McDonald’s: The Fast Feud Channel4 isn’t just a documentary — it’s a morality play for our times, with pasties as protagonists and PR as the real power behind the throne.I make an appearance, attempting to decode how Greggs. with its vegan stunts, clever collaborations, and anti-corporate charm, managed to rebrand itself as the cheeky chap the nation wants to have breakfast with. Meanwhile, McDonald’s, armed with billion-dollar budgets and baffling self-belief, continues to…

I’ve been continuing to ponder Prince Harry’s PR woes laid bare in his BBC confessional. When you repeatedly cast yourself as the eternally wounded, misunderstood prince, the public doesn’t lean in with empathy, they switch off. Or worse, they roll their eyes and reach for the popcorn.Harry isn’t losing because he’s being honest. He’s losing because he lacks smart tactical thinking. It’s not authenticity that’s hurting him, it’s predictability. It’s Route One PR—old-school, long-ball tactics. High on effort, low on creativity. Emotional honesty without strategic nous is just performance art for the tabloids.His enemies aren’t attacking the substance; they’re exploiting…

The death of the Pope is more than a news story; it’s a moment to pause. A moment to consider the cultural value of humility, of grace. High-minded topics for a humble publicist.Whether you admired him or regarded him with suspicion, he embodied something increasingly alien to public life: the notion that transgression can be met not just with judgment, but with the possibility of redemption.A man whose role was steeped in the language of forgiveness and human frailty, his death is a stark reminder. On what we believe punishment should look like. On whether we still think people can…

So, did the Blue Horizon space trip break the glass ceiling — or just inflate another PR bubble? That’s the question I asked myself this morning, wading through the media tickertape fallout from the all-female space jaunt, fronted by Katy Perry, aboard a rocket carrying a payload of celebrities, selfies, and soft-focus sentimentality into the stratosphere.The company channelled the stunt via a livestream hosted by broadcaster Charissa Thompson. Celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, Kris Jenner, and Orlando Bloom gazed skyward from the ground, while the main man himself, Jeff Bezos, escorted the crew to the capsule. It was soundtracked by breathless…

Mark Borkowski is a highly acclaimed PR and Communications industry figure, renowned for his expertise and unmatched experience spanning four decades. His influence in the industry has earned him a place alongside figures like Alistair Campbell and in PR Week’s list of the 25 most influential industry figures. A sharp observer of the cultural zeitgeist, Borkowski understands better than most how the media works – and where it’s heading.At our first Great British Brands breakfast of 2025, hosted at The Arts Club and sponsored by Rathbones, he offered a stark but essential reflection on the state of modern journalism and the new conditions under which PRs…

There’s a strange new behaviour quietly sweeping through the body of modern business. It’s the quiet epidemic of the corporate mind.It’s not disruptive innovation. It’s not some bold new AI.It’s silence. Cold, calculated, and maddening silence.Let me take you into a scene: a client. Two months of deep strategic work. Narrative building. Positioning. The kind of real, reputation-defining stuff.And then… the moment. A broadsheet interview is lined up. Not clickbait. Not content fluff. The real thing. And on the morning of that interview…silence. No call. No cancellation. Just the eerie digital absence that now passes for a response. This is…

Exclusive: The Duke of Sussex is facing a legacy-threatening moment of truth in the worsening rift over Sentebale, warns PR expert Mark Borkowski.Forget the endless carousel of Sussex fails. There are opinions galore about Sussex Netflix deals and Sussex “exclusives” feeding the algorithmic maw. But Sentebalegate is far more worrying. Strip away all that’s gone before and what you’re left with now is something much more severe, and far more damaging. This isn’t the latest PR wobble. This is legacy-threatening. The latest fallout at Sentebale is the moment when the Harry brand meets brutal, unrelenting consequences. There has been too many negative…

It’s not Watergate—it’s something far more unhinged. Signalgate: a Trumpian soap opera scripted by Jesse Armstrong, where national security collides with reality TV energy, and everyone thinks they’re the smartest person in the encrypted room. This wasn’t clandestine espionage. This was a defence strategy kicked around in a Signal group chat like a bunch of mates dissecting an episode, a round of golf, or the result of a football match. And then, because reality has entirely left the building, a journalist from The Atlantic was casually invited in to join the lads. Not leaked to. Not briefed off-record. Invited. Like a…

I have been a poorly boy this week. Somewhere between the Lemsip and the fevered doomscrolling of a bloke struck down by an unholy strain of man flu, a revelation hit me. And not the soothing, metaphysical kind. The Book of Revelation kind.Trumpets (and Trump-ets), beasts, AI fever dreams, Mars rockets, and the occasional false prophet with a podcast—it’s all there. But this isn’t prophecy. It’s PR. Or at least, the scorched-earth version of it.Because let’s be honest: the virus isn’t just in my body. It’s in the body politic. It’s in our culture. And, damningly, it’s deep in the…

A thought for Monday. When I wrote The Art of the Publicity Stunt, it wasn’t just a book, it was a manifesto. It was 1999, when the stunt was the tool of the maverick, the performer on the fringes who understood that attention wasn’t given; it was taken. The Borkowski way was about disruption, but not chaos. It was about spectacle, but with purpose. Theatrics, but always with a message. We disrupted to elevate, challenge, and shape stories that would last.Fast forward. The world has changed. And so has disruption.Where once it was the calling card of the outsider, now…

A week on, and I am still thinking about that bizarre, telling moment: JD Vance standing beside Donald Trump as Volodymyr Zelensky, a wartime leader, was questioned, not about war, democracy, or geopolitics, but about why he wasn’t wearing a suit.It was a question that should have been inconsequential. Instead, it became a symbol of the way the PR game has shifted.“You’re at the highest level in this country’s office, and you refuse to wear a suit – do you own a suit?” The question came from Brian Glenn, a correspondent for Real America’s Voice, a right-wing cable channel that…