Mark My Words Blog
Welcome to ‘Mark My Words,’ the digital sanctuary where insight meets intrigue, and commentary sparks contemplation.
Delve into the dynamic world of PR maverick Mark Borkowski as he unravels the threads of media, culture, and communication. Mark’s blog is a treasure trove of industry wisdom, offering a backstage pass to the inner workings of publicity and the ever-evolving landscape of modern media.
Now this is a great PR stunt
T-shirts equipped with ‘I, Robot’ trailer Coming soon to a T-shirt near you: trailers for “I, Robot,” starring Will Smith. In the never-ending search to capture the attention of consumers bombarded by commercials, billboards and a massive array of other advertisements, 20th Century Fox debuted an innovative new guerilla marketing tactic at E3 last week — T-shirts embedded with video screens that played “I, Robot” trailers. The two women who wore the video T-shirts as they walked around E3 drew crowds and TV news crews on hand to cover the gaming conference at the Los Angeles Convention Center. 20th Century…
Michael Moore the follow-up
Hot off the wires from the Canadian �National Post�… �In the days before Cannes, Michael Moore’s Disney criticism whipped festival audiences into a fever for Fahrenheit 9/11. Hollywood cynics called it the usual P.T. Barnum showmanship by Moore, but when the movie finally unspooled, it earned resounding applause at Monday’s press screenings.� Barnum � excellent. But what of the distribution threat, after Disney refused flatly? (and, it now comes out, gave Moore 12 MONTHS notice).Surprise surprise, Miramax, the film�s producer, under Harvey Weinstein�s direction, stepped forward assuring Moore and the world that a deal was imminent. As of today, though,…
Creative PR?
I’ve just come across a blogger called Loic Le Meur who feels that media companies need to adapt in the new world of journalism Traditional press releases are going to die soon. Journalists get hundreds of them everyday by fax and email( DOOH). This is one of the reasons why we (companies) pay PR agencies to call the journalists and try to get their attention. This is not the way to go. How many people are still interested in the Official Story? Not that many. Now this is a radical thought. I adore a challenging idea. I see a time…
Piers Morgan Goes and yet another Media Person makes a dignified exit
So Piers steps down. Has anybody noticed that, through all the scandals hitting the headlines during and after the Iraq war, the only resignations have come from the media world? Dyke…Gilligan…Davis….and now Morgan. We’ve yet to see a single Government goon take the pearl-handled revolver. Food for thought?
A Note from my Inbox, circa 2002
It’s funny how interesting this seems two years on….. Saudis spin like a well-oiled machine By Roger Franklin June 23 2002 Even among his rivals in the PR business Washington spinmeister Michael Petruzzello incites mixed emotions. For some, those whose outfits foundered in the wake of the dot-com bomb and September 11th, it’s a simple case of jealousy: while their receipts nose-dived, the president of Qorvis Communications’ job as official US spokesman for the House of Saud has kept him rolling in dough. And then there are the others. The flaks who insist, with varying degrees of sincerity, that Qorvis…
The vile PR stunt that escalates the hatred
NICHOLAS BERG R.I.P. Stomach-churning, hideous images are the stock-in-trade of the Al Quaeda publicity department. Their cuttings library grows daily. To describe the destruction of four airliners and the World Trade Centre as the world’s blackest-ever PR stunt is not to intend disrespect to its innocent victims; rather it’s to acknowledge that Bin Laden and his fellow-travellers are easily as adept as any clever geek in the Pentagon at putting the web to work. The mediaeval-style decapitation of poor Nick Berg was an up-to-the-minute internet event to revenge disrespect shown to Muslims in published newspaper photographs: in other words, an…
Rumsfeld's End ?
It was a last ditch PR ploy, but Rumsfeld’s testimony may not save his job. The man squirmed on the spot as he faced difficult questions from the press corps. Gone was the swagger that framed his briefings at the height of ‘Shock and Awe’. Now called Torture-gate, the credibility of the US is below rock bottom. Any lingering gratitude over taking down Saddam Hussein has been all but eliminated by the American torture and abuse of detainees in the same prison where Saddam committed unspeakable crimes against political enemies. Rumsfeld’s grip on his job as President Bush’s chief prosecutor…
All Quiet on the Soaring Sun Front
Odd how quiet it seems at The Sun this week. Think about it. Surely in the middle of this furore about Piers Morgan’s dodgy atrocitigraphs, and with the Express positively frothing at the mouth, you’d think Sun-readers would be being keenly browbeaten to do something or think something. But no. A gentle hush has descended. So why should they be keeping their powder dry? My suspicions are that the Sun’s intrepid investigative squad are frantically reeling in a few favours from their paper’s long and intimate relationship with the British Army. I reckon they’re hot on the trail of the…well,…
PUT ANIMAL IN CHARGE
Lou Grant was an iconic TV show in the late 1970s starring Ed Asner as the eponymous newspaperman extraordinaire. The fictional L.A. Tribune he worked for employed a typical cast of clich�d characters including the Bright Young Reporter Joe Rossi, the septuagenarian female proprietor Mrs Pynchon (echoing Kay Graham who owned Newsweek and The Washington Post at the time) and the bearded, apparently inarticulate (suggesting he was permanently stoned) staff photographer, who wasn’t considered worthy of a name, so they just called him ‘Animal’. Ho ho. How droll. A mate who’s been a Picture Editor for the past 30 years…
Methods of spin
I picked this up yesterday, it�s a report that suggests that the images of graphic brutality to Iraqi captives were produced by a porn site The conspiracy theorists are being fuelled I suggest by some shadow department in the Pentagon�s spin machine who may be trying to deflect some heat. The published report says the images of the American GIs raping and sexually abusing Iraqi women were made by U.S. and Hungarian adult Websites – who may not have known the images had been picked up and used as propaganda by at least two Arabic-language Websites protesting the U.S. war…
'NOT FIT TO WEAR QUEEN'S UNIFORM!'
When crisis looms, go on the attack. This is exactly what the PR aides did to counter the publication of the shocking pictures printed in the Daily Mirror of British troops apparently urinating on Iraqi prisoners in custody. The Army’s heaviest hitter, Chief of the General Staff General Sir Michael Jackson, was quickly wheeled out to comment and underline his disgust .In doing so he created a winning soundbite: “They’re not fit to wear the Queen’s uniform.” Always useful for friendly search engines and lazy broadcasters. Sir Mike also declared a probe was underway into the claims, and promised immediate…
The Downfall of the Abu Ghraib Dungeon
For decades Saddam Hussein’s infamous Abu Ghraib dungeon was the scene of terrible cruelty against innocent Iraqi captives. Now the US forces are in charge and it’s business as usual as the torture continues. Images of cruelty against the detainees surfaced last night and were broadcast on ABC’s ‘60 minutes’ programme. The shots showing Iraqis being brutalised by their American captors must have shocked the locals in Land of the Free. Their image of being liberators and benefactors disintegrated in a nanosecond. Overall it’s been a bad week for the Pentagon PR minders. They’ve spectacularly failed to turn and spin…
The Rendon Group
I’m always interested in what the Rendon group are up to, and from this week’s PR Watch I find this gem. RENDON GROUPS HELPS AFGHAN GOVERNMENT WITH IMAGE ‘The Pentagon has hired the Rendon Group to counsel and coordinate communications for Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai.’ O’Dwyer’s PR Daily reports. ‘The United States” according to the New York Times “wants to bolster the leadership of Karzai by promoting ‘visible signs of reconstruction.” The paper reports that in recent weeks Karzai’s government has issued ‘choreographed announcements about hundreds of schools and clinics to be built or rehabilitated in the next few months.’…
Cowboys and Angels
Pity poor Peter Wood, Managing Director of B. Delamore Ltd. of Wisbech, and his 12-year-old son Charlie. You see, in their innocence they created a variety of petunia called ‘Charlie’s Angel’ which they took to market. Unfortunately, as their success began to take root, the full wrath of Columbia Pictures descended on this very English family. Columbia didn’t buy into the argument that the plants were being marketed in honour of the Wood’s son; they saw it simply as trademark infringement. This pretty, pink plant was apparently benefiting from the publicity of their hit film starring Diaz Barrymore and Liu….
The End of Parky
So the doyen of British chat show hosts, Michael Parkinson, has defected from the BBC to ITV – news which has generated metres of coverage in the newspapers this morning, all commenting on how things ain’t what they used to be with the show. It’s generally felt that his best interviews are a thing of the past. Sure, there were classics: John Wayne, Orson Welles, Muhammad Ali, Peter Sellers, but what all the commentators and critics forget is that they were all from a different and more innocent time. We now live in an age where celebrities are multi-million dollar…
Tony's week
I am keen to see how our PM, Bad Boy Blair , manages to spin his way out of his European U-turn this week. The last seven days have been bad for Tony, and the forthcoming seven will be full of deliberate distractions to try and outwit the pursuing pack of snarling, political scribblers.
Beckham free Sunday
Three weeks have passed since the tabloids first outed David Beckham’s alleged affairs. As I survey the red tops today I don’t see a new angle on Goldenballs. The Beckhams have said nothing and eased up on the impromptu photo opportunities. There seems an unholy silence. Perhaps it is accurate to say that the odyssey is not yet over but the nation has lost interest. I suspect there are various hacks hanging around waiting to light the wet tinder as soon as the tears have dried.
Returning Coffins
http://www.drudgereport.com for updates (c)DRUDGE REPORT 2004 Since the end of the Vietnam War successive American presidents have worried that their military actions would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of U.S. soldiers arriving back at air bases in flag-draped caskets. To this problem, the Bush administration has found a simple solution: it has ended the public disemination of such images by simply banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers’ homecomings on all military bases. The problem is that they haven’t thought through the consequences. Hundreds of photos capturing flag-draped caskets carrying dead soldiers home from Iraq have…
SNAP DRAGONS
Gone are the days of the Palace issuing the latest Snowdon or Litchfield family snap and it smoothly finding its way to prominence in every daily paper. Take yesterday, for instance, the 78th birthday of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The anonymous Press Association shot of three horses, or six, depending on your politics (sorry Ma’am), colourfully graced page 5 in The Times, made it onto page 13 in the monochrome part of The Daily Mirror (complete with snide leftie comment about aforementioned monarch ignoring riding hat safety guidelines) and was shrunk to the irrelevancy of a postage stamp on…
WILL SHILL FOR NUKES
This week’s Spinwatch has this fantastic nib: University of Texas Professor Sheldon Landsberger has admitted that a pro-nuclear column he submitted under his own name to the Austin American-Statesman was actually written by the Potomac Communications Group, a Washington PR firm that works for the nuclear power industry. “For at least 25 years,” reports William Adler, an employee of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee named Theodore M. Besmann (who moonlights for Potomac Communications) “has had published nuclear love songs in newspapers across the country, under his own or others’ names.” SOURCE: Austin Chronicle, April 16, 2004 /