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.
Supernatural PR: fear that fans can love
If you’ve been anywhere near a newsfeed this week, you’ll have seen the clever “coffee shop surprise” viral ad for the remake of 70’s horror flick Carrie. The short video (it’s here if you’ve managed to miss it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlOxlSOr3_M) is set in a New York coffee shop, modified by some special effects pixies so that furniture, books and certain people can be moved by remote control. Following an altercation between two ‘customers’ (actually plants), a woman appears to dash a man against a wall, hurl tables across the floor and knock books off the shelves, all with the power of…
Daily Mail’s magic trick: former half-human Red Ed, now fully formed
So the Mail/Miliband hoo ha drags on – as I write this an argument already played out a hundred times on twitter is being hashed out afresh on Question Time. I don’t want to contribute to either side of the moral debate, but I do want to make an observation. For once, the Mail, the hymn sheet of middle England, looks out of touch, while weirdy, wonky red Ed looks positively cuddly. How did this happen? When the Mail ran Geoffrey Levy’s piece on Ralph Miliband last Saturday, it expected some backlash. Indeed, it wanted one. Ed Miliband was apopleptic….
Party Conferences: a 21st century dilemma.
As Labour conference fades away and the Tories’ own outing cranks into gear, I begin to long for silly season. After a month-long balm of survey stories and rubbish stunts, followed by a month of stultifying wonkish mumbo jumbo, I have found myself not hailing the return of ‘real news,’ but instead feeling mystified as to why our news agenda remains dominated by the same Westminster routines. Conference should be quite a modern affair. The idea of political parties leaving their neo-gothic bubble-wrap and venturing forth amongst the red/blue/yellow blooded members of their organisations is, in theory, exhilarating. Ideas could…
There is nothing more dismal than a fact
I like a good story as much as anyone, and I can’t claim to always be obsessive in my pursuit of the truth, but coverage of the so-called ‘White Widow’ Samantha Lewthwaite on Friday and over the weekend has put the British media to shame. Unsubstantiated claims that she was linked to the Westgate Mall attack in Kenya last week not only cheapen discussion of this bleak event, but benefit the Jihadists themselves. Lewthwaite first rose to attention after the 7 July London bombings of 2005. The widow of bomber Germaine Lindsay, she was initially critical of her husband’s actions,…
GTA V Launch: A PR Cultural Milestone
Hats off at Borkowski towers to the pixies behind the GTA V launch, one of the most staggering, captivating launches I’ve laid eyes on for years. The game has shifted £500m worth of units in 24 hours, and analysts are putting good money on its hitting a billion within the year. The petty crime ‘em up has joined the ranks of Modern Warfare 2, World of Warcraft and Wii Sports: games which have proven beyond all doubt that videogaming is now at the very centre of mainstream entertainment culture. Yet GTA V perhaps brings something new – this isn’t just…
Ketchum PR
Following recent reports into Ketchum PR’s involvement with Russia, we thought we would take a deeper look into how the PR giant works its magic worldwide. This is not the first time that the PR behemoth has struck controversy, yet they continue to go from strength to strength. What is their secret? First and foremost, Ketchum PR is not afraid to get its hands dirty. On more than one occasion, the company has brushed up against United States Federal Law for being involved in “covert propaganda”, usually upon instruction from the US Government itself. Whether promoting government-backed health insurance plans…
Kitkat Kerplunk: Going beyond Google and Evil.
News of Google and Nestle’s KitKat/Android partnership has been met with a wealth of delighted puns in the tech community, but brand managers and business writers have been left with a bitter aftertaste in their mouths at the announcement of this unusual pairing. Though the press release has been widely parroted, and for the most part, pasted throughout technology news outlets and the associated blogosphere, the reaction beyond these confines has been limited. The FT blog reported that the only message that the partnership sent out to brand managers was to “take a break”. http://blogs.ft.com/businessblog/2013/09/android-kitkats-message-to-brand-managers-take-a-break/?Authorised=false, Mic Wright at the Telegraph…
Conquest without contribution: sport now second to scandal and salary
Another late summer morning, another punning sport scandal headline graces the front page of the Sun. ‘L.Pee.W’ screamed the red top from Newstands across the country, as news broke that England’s victorious Cricket squad had celebrated their triumph with not so much a sticky wicket as a wet one. This would have been a big deal whatever the case – the mitigating circumstances put forward by the team (they were drunk and had to ‘answer the call of nature’) introduced the possibility for ‘debate’ necessary for any viral hit and ensured plenty of digital coverage. However, I can’t help but…
Here’s to the crazy ones: Brin’s burger a sign of wilder times?
Last week, the first ever synthetic beef hamburger was served to a panel of experts. It was a Promethean feat of human ingenuity, involving weeks of intensive lab work, hand weaving of microscopic fibres, and the expenditure of a cool £215,000. Despite all this, however, the achievements of Dr Mark Post and his team pale in comparison to those of the burger’s patron, Sergey Brin. Through years of dedicated PR work, unstoppable drive and genuine creative genius, Brin has managed to cast himself globally as a sort of spokesperson for human ingenuity itself. Brin’s public journey began, of course, with…
Narrative by numbers: The production line of storytelling
I recently came across a post on PR Newswire’s blog (http://blog.prnewswire.com/2013/08/01/using-storytelling-to-drive-business-goals/) informing me of all the ways I could use storytelling to drive my business goals. Like the narrator of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, who finds himself cast back in time upon consumption of a madeline, I was sent rocketing back to the autumn of 2011. Leveson was only just winding into gear, Mr James Saville OBE lived in our hearts still as a treasured childhood companion, and a journalist friend of mine responded to an enthusiastic tweet I’d sent with a putdown. Replying to some thought…
Plato, pressure and the death of PR stunts
Activists scaled The Shard and the Home Office brazenly paraded their views on strategically driven ad vans. Has the PR stunt died a somewhat tepid death? In a CommsChat twitter conversation, Mark Borkowski discusses bullish lobbying, the art of EQ & the importance of play via Plato.
All That Twitters Is Not Gold: The Challenge of Taming the Social Herd
This week, the British media’s obsession with Twitter reached a new zenith. Unfortunately for the social network, however, this was no love in. Instead, after feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez drew attention to vicious slurs and threats made to her via the site at the end of last week, commentators have been up in arms, arguing whether Twitter is doing enough to prevent or punish this kind of abuse. The company’s response has been instructive for new media brands: what to do when you’re called upon to control a free for all? The behaviour of Twitter spokespeople has been much criticised….
Jurassic Ad Men: a marriage of equals or the last of a dying breed?
This week, the business and media commentariat have talked of little but the upcoming merger of Omnicom and Publicis, the second and third largest advertising groups in the world, respectively. As befits a venture which involves hundreds of the world’s most glamourous admen and women, the accompanying spin is so utopian as to be dazzling. Two central justifications are given for the operation: 1) this is not a messy acquisition but a ‘merger of equals’ and 2) as two of the world’s more forward thinking ad organisations, the merger will leave the companies better placed to innovate digitally. As far…
iBaby: Clarence House's latest must have toy
Photo Credit: Andre Camara So there we have it; the conclusion of the greatest product launch campaign Britain has ever seen. No, Apple didn’t bring out the iWatch while you weren’t looking. I’m talking about the latest release from modish mass market lifestyle brand Clarence House. In order to promote the latest instalment in their Cambridge range, the brand’s PR pixies arranged a years-long campaign, incorporating a wedding-based stunt, a boat party, several celebrity world tours and a much-hyped mystery unveiling. The whole thing is enough to make an old hand like me exhausted, but will it pay off?…
Lobbying washes whiter
When, in 2010, David Cameron described commercial Lobbying as the “next big scandal” in British politics, he drew attention to a strange truth. The work of the commercial lobbyist has all the necessary triggers for popular British outrage, not least because it’s conducted by a tightly networked elite behind closed doors. Despite this, the public and the press have never quite whipped themselves into requisite levels of ire for a proper witch hunt. The practice is as old as sin itself – even the young Churchill dabbled in the dark arts for Burma Oil – and yet, for my money,…
Greenpeace vs The Shard: Unleashing the Heat of the Arctic Campaign
Last week, six members of Greenpeace ascended their way into the history books during fifteen hours of sheer sweat, muscle and no doubt emotion, as they scaled The Shard to draw attention to Shell’s plans to drill for oil in the Arctic. It was a bold, inspiring, beautiful action, that did the thing that all great stunts do: for a brief moment, took our breath away. Stunts like this have always divided opinion, and in an age where everyone has the microphone of social media available to them, the multifarious views are more apparent than ever. For some the women…
Andy Murray: a modern hero in an old fashioned mould
As Britain hails a new hero in the shape of Wimbledon great Andy Murray, it’s natural to wonder what impact his victory will have on him from a PR point of view. The genius of Simon Fuller and his team at XIX Entertainment, managers of the tennis star, is that they are building a brand for Murray that allows him to be himself. Murray looks like an old fashioned sportsman; he’s the epitome of the Corinthian spirit, reinvented for a modern, eager audience. |He is not motivated by money or celebrity, he’s genuinely a person with an overwhelming passion for…
The Art of Persuasion and The Maverick Factor
There’s an exhibition on at the moment at the British Library entitled Propaganda: Power and Persuasion. A much maligned term these days, thanks to the work of Herr Goebbels & sons (which is presented in all its horror/glory in the exhibition), propaganda also has a less sinister heritage – the term entered common parlance when Edward L Bernays issued his seminal work on influencing public opinion named Propaganda. The book pretty much set the terms for PR practice as we know it today, earning him the title of ‘the father of public relations’. On Monday I’ll be at the British…
Celebrity Whistleblowers: A New Breed of Fame Junkie?
“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” So said Benjamin Franklin, a man who knew a thing or two about the activities of the state and its miscontents. He recognised the haste with which word spreads once a secret gets out, particularly when the information contained is shocking or surprising – anything that gives the possessor cultural currency. The only way truly to keep a secret is to share it with absolutely no one. The recent glut of celebrity hackers and fame junkie whistleblowers suggests that this wisdom is not widely heeded. Edward Snowdon, Julian Assange…
Smart Ways to Advertise
A railway safety advert that’s been tunefully taking Australia by storm has penetrated the international conscious after winning the ‘biggie’ of the advertising world: the Cannes Lions Grand Prix. The ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ ad is beautifully simple and has all the hallmarks of a great, modern campaign. It’s funny, it’s catchy, it appeals to adults and kids alike, it eschews worthiness – and it has more than a touch of schadenfreude. Crucially the team at McCann Melbourne have managed what many of their advertising contemporaries are failing to achieve: shareability. The ad has already spawned at least three parody…