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.
And it wasn't even raining!
Remember last year at the Oscars? “No, it wasn’t a marketing stunt”, said Samsung, who may have paid a reported £12m for its advertising “integration” but the company, it insisted, was every bit as astonished as everyone else when host Ellen De Generes’s star-studded selfie, taken during the broadcast on a Samsung smartphone, became the most retweeted message of all time. It was forwarded on Twitter more than 2 million times by the time the ceremony was over, causing the social media site briefly to collapse and ensuring that coverage of the awards focused almost less on the winners than…
We Must Not Help to Advance the ISIS Agenda
ISIS craves prominent news coverage, and they crave momentum behind their desire to spread terror. This week their heinous images spread quickly online – propaganda meant to both shock the West and recruit new devotees. It raised a sensitive issue for news outlets again. Should they show the images, after all just one click away for anyone online or refrain? There is a wider question surrounding the impact on blocking them when those willing or curious enough can find the images in seconds. But wouldn’t it be better to block the barbaric films? Surely it would be more effective to…
Leadership doesn’t come with a promise…
“Problems cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need people who can dream of things that never were.” – John Keats One thing is for sure, those with a true purpose don’t follow the rules! Nobody who had the honour of listening to Ben Saunders talk last week can have failed to be both humbled and inspired by his breathtaking passion and will to fulfill his dreams. For twenty years Ben Saunders has dreamed the impossible. A round-trip from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and back again…
Prince Andrew and the cold hard facts
As stories go, it’s a good one! Prince Andrew, underage sex, plus a reputation and questionable judgement already in question now under further scrutiny. This is the age of perceptions. Reputation is driven by what we feel and not by the cold, hard facts. Without a rock-solid purpose for yourself, being a spare is a very considerable challenge and Andrew seems dazzled by money and power. In this latest debacle, Prince Andrew is sucked into the narrative surrounding Jane Doe and all the lurid stories that are circulating wildly. It is almost impossible for him to untangle himself. Last week…
The ongoing UBER PR trip
You can say what you like about Uber, but when it comes to a value added experience to drive loyalty to their brand they are in the driver’s seat. In Uber’s first coordinated, multi-city event, film studio 20th Century Fox is giving users of the ride-sharing service a chance to win exclusive passes to an advance screening of the film, “Kingsman” Though Uber has dabbled in premium cinema experiences in New York and Los Angeles before, this is its first coordinated, multi-city event through its app. At the same time as seeing rapid growth, Uber has been facing growing competition…
The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game: Why is football so bad at PR?
My thoughts from The Drum earlier this week on why football is so bad at PR. The Ched Evans #fail juggernaut rumbles on. This negative fallout reframes football, sucking the hapless into its black hole. The whole affair suggests there is something rotten at the heart of the enterprise. Sadly, the idiot Evans’ hubristic soap opera is just another of a series of scandals that have put football on the front pages this season. Football is big business. The analysts at Deloitte reported the Premier League clubs’ revenues broke the £3bn mark in the recent 2013-14 season. Sponsor TV companies…
Hollywood terror
Certainly I did not predict the extent of the Sony hack, nor was I alone in suggesting that it might be a festive dose of creative hype to life a mediocre film. As it turns out, the ongoing escalation will text the strength of the top tier leadership and the ability to survive ruthless hacks and attacks. Statistically ninety percent of motor vehicle crashes are caused at least in part by human error. The mechanics of the recent Hollywood pile up is even more compelling. Consider the media feeding frenzy, surrounding the latest batch of bitchy emails, hacked from the…
Brand Strength and the Political Media War
The Guardian’s Data Blog recently compared Russell Brand’s reach with that of the newspaper attempting to discredit him, The Sun. The findings were hardly a surprise, and merely confirmed a trend that we have been talking about at Borkowski.do for a long time. Where in years gone by the favour of The Sun newspaper was carefully coveted by the political class, today falling foul of the redtop is of little concern to minor celebrities. Despite numerous attempts to frame public discourse about class over the last year – with splashes ranging from PlebGate to the most recent spat with Brand…
Don't shoot the messenger!
Right now, Uber’s PR team should be celebrating having secured feature pieces in both the FT and Vanity Fair, the latter of which could have successfully repositioned the brand from its helter-skelter course. http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/12/uber-travis-kalanick-controversy Rather than enjoying a few strong pats on the back however, that team is probably going to have to put on its firefighting gear, whilst wondering where the next blaze is going to start. The fact is, it doesn’t matter how strong your PR team is if the company culture is wrong. As such, Uber works as the perfect case study for anyone evaluating how not…
Dapper (Not-A-Barrel-Of) Laughs
Already this week (and it’s only Monday evening!) I have witnessed the rise and fall of a feckless nobody heralded as the next big TV icon. Injected into mainstream media by TV producers in search of profit, only to be dragged violently out again when the heat (allegedly) became too hot for the sponsors to handle, the Dapper Laughs story is one we’ve heard many times before. It is astonishing how we lap up a publicity trick if it hooks us with a shock tactic. So basic and prurient is the individual in question, that I am loath to dedicate…
We Are Never, Ever, Ever Getting Back Together!
It seems that pop’s darling of the decade has turned diva this week as it was announced that Taylor Swift had pulled her entire back catalogue of music from Spotify. Through all the initial hubub, it seems that everybody’s missed the point: this is a publicity scam, and it’s one that she’s already rehearsed. The move was practically in the DNA of 1989’s release. Don’t be misled by her bubblegum lyrics, Taylor Swift is one of the most powerful women in the music industry at the moment. And this is in no small part due to her masterful ability to…
A careless toss of a coin!
Whether you believe it or not isn’t the point. The announcement on Twitter that Cadbury’s had lost the festive spirit and cancelled supplies of chocolate coins fuelled an outcry of emotion from the crowd. That’s the point. Was this a stunt? That remains to be seen, but Cadbury’s failed to respect the emotions of their audience, either by commercial pressure or by exposing people to the playing up of the brand. Loudly announcing (with some tactical timing) a well loved brand is to be discontinued is nothing new. We all remember the Heinz Salad Cream stunt after all. “People preferred…
The Distraction Strategy
I would argue there are some things you can teach and some things you cannot. I am still not convinced you can teach creativity for example, but you can certainly pass on how to be an appreciator and maybe that is the point here. PR is a craft. At the heart of that craft are three muscles that must be trained and flexed on a daily basis. Listening, appreciation and curiosity. Now, more than ever, this world demands a concession to conversational instinct and that comes from a lifetime of building and nurturing relationships and of understanding human nuance. But…
The way PR engages has changed and trust is key
Many of us have felt the shifting sands for some time but the Greenpeace, Lego and Shell narrative really does signal the last warning shot. This world demands trust above all and, alongside that, the right people in positions of power who understand the pressures. Traditional methodologies are no longer fit for purpose. A younger, more knowing generation cannot be moved in the same way as before. Legacy industries have to touch the same consumers they once bought. Fifty years ago corporations could hide behind expensive public image campaigns. But now thanks to social media they actually need to connect…
Fashioning a stunt
Textiles and fashion occupy a central position in the realm of material culture. Apart from fulfilling the basic human need for clothing and protection, textiles play important political, economic, and religious functions. Through variations of construction and patterning, cloth also has a great capacity for communication and serves as a significant site of personal and cultural identity. How we dress in particular is, by its very nature, one of the most visible of the arts. Given the nature and role of textiles, it should therefore come as no surprise to discover that they can serve as powerful visual metaphors for…
War of the Words
The political banners under which we operate may be different, but the forces that drive our world are still the same. After many years enjoying comparative warmth and reconciliation following the fall of the USSR, the imperial eagle of Russia is narrowing the eyes of its Western head and turning once more towards the East. This week, the New York Times reported that Russia is set to <http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/world/europe/russia-takes-step-to-extend-control-over-news-media.html?ref=europe&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=1&referrer=> “limit foreign ownership of Russian media outlets to 20 percent, targeting several prominent publications critical of the government and extending the Kremlin’s control over the nation’s independent news media”. Russian lawmakers claim…
Curiosity about what we don't understand needs to exceed that which we do!
So Scotland has voted. All the hype, the rhetoric, propaganda, and social chatter boiled down to one thing. In the end the majority are still cautious and rather than embrace uncertainty and change (an opportunity some did in this case) stick with the status quo. The crowd certainly has the power these days to change opinion and spin a media charge, but arguably only up to a point. The loudest voices aren’t always the pioneers and there is a big question around data, but that’s another blog altogether! Anyway, this is not a radical new thought. But it’s one I keep…
The Recipe
Identify the goal. Capitalise on every channel. Hook celebrity. Keep it simple… And fun! Make it immediate. Consider the power of viral multiplication. Allow participants to feel good. (Ensure its not really worthy.) Indulge the emotional connection. Sit back and watch it grow. ALS. It doesn’t matter if it’s not new. Kudos!
Call of Duty propaganda is Goebbels for new age
For a split second I thought I was watching an episode of Homeland. The slaughter of the American journalist was styled with HD cameras using an arid backdrop straight from Breaking Bad. From the very beginning, Islamic State (IS) understood the culture they wanted to undermine and the need to create emotion among the crowd in doing so, and they are masterful at it. The past 24 hours has ushered in a new age for sadistic and sophisticated propaganda. In a Call of Duty era, the video employed the highest level of technical expertise, thought-through location and almost certainly an…
So what exactly IS reputation?
We need to get used to the fact that these days there is no fixed mark on reputation. Along with the Buzzfeed generation comes the hint that the old media traditions fail, with short form memes feeding the wires, and less emphasis on the elongated and researched story. Brands and individuals must become comfortable with their imperfections and vulnerabilities because we have a crowd and a ‘can know anything’ psyche, where reputations are savaged in an instant and often with no grounding in reality. The emotion of the crowd gathers momentum and careers along gathering falsehoods before the accused has…