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.
The Royal Wedding: Rebranding the House of Windsor?
The marriage of Princess Diana’s son struck a new beginning -the British Monarchy. Prince William is the great white hope, a fresh face with his mother’s heart and compassion. He will, in time, lead the Firm into a new age. The question is when?
The relaunch of the brand involved an extraordinary, experiential three ring circus full of pomp and pageantry. Tinged with a bourgeois romance and a certain playfulness, the wedding was sealed with a snog that adorned the front pages from Stockport to Shanghai.
Spin, Weddings, Money and the House of Windsor
Piers Morgan dismisses the idea that the British Secret services ever murdered anyone. In a new movie documentary feature, Unlawful Killing, Piers suggests, if MI5 don’t kill the baddies, what’s the point of them? I feel that the new Royal couple may have a similar problem. I might have got hold of the wrong end of the stick, but they seem to be playing down much of the glamour that is surely an essential part of the royal schtick. Kate Middleton is subtly selling the idea she will be nothing like her deceased mum-in-law to be (there’s a simpler way,…
The Art of Change
Is there any excuse for a deferral, hidden behind the familiar “no comment”? For the first time in my career, I find myself pondering this Churchillian aphorism. “No comment” is a splendid expression which I am using again and again. My old cohorts launched a new offering via PR Week last week, which naturally pasted me onto the front page. Lordy, what a headline. Last week I had nothing to say; I guess when I do, I will. Some wag on Twitter correctly observed that I’m quick to offer opinion as a rent-a-quote on public affairs yet remain tight-lipped on…
The Cowell Question
The Observer is asking the big question – is Svengali in chief Simon Cowell essential to the X Factor? Two journalists debate the pros and cons, intersecting the public conversation surrounding Cowell’s migration to America. But neither address Cowell’s principal ingredient, his enormous power to influence the hype and guide the off-screen narrative. After watching Britain’s Got Talent – the Dark Lord’s other bastard child – on Saturday, it was obvious from the slow media pick up that something was missing. Taking its first wobbly steps without Daddy, I wondered if it could ever be as successful. Could the new…
The Generation of Now
Of course PR folk and their clients need to address the challenges that face them in a world where social networks are revolutionizing the planet. We know we need to engage a whole new generation of consumers whose values are being reshaped almost daily by their new social dialogue. It’s now harder then ever to raise the noise level. How do we address and capture creative imagination? Some wag once described my creativity as nothing more than fact manipulation. Hurtful and also untrue, but the challenge remains to define voodoo. I believe that the current trend in “creative thinking” in…
Struggling with Reality
It’s an absolute fact that once you’re in the public eye everything changes. Politicians in particular struggle to get used to being public property. Perhaps it should be called the Camcleg law of diminishing contact with everyday realities, at least for the duration of this Parliament. ‘Call-me-Dave’ Cameron and his wife Sam’s latest PR stunt is a classic case of hubris gone awry. Why take a budget weekend break in Spain to prove to the great unwashed that he’s ‘just like us’? It is unrealistic: we all know that his life has long since left the realms of normality.
The Hard Sell and the Hard Truth
“Can PR be honest?” people outside the industry have been known to ask. Can it, as an industry, stand up and tell hard truths occasionally? There seems to be a suspicion that the industry takes in the less scholarly in the same way the clergy used to in centuries past. People prone to toe the party line. My son Janek sometimes says to me, a little pointedly: “But Dad, you just sell stuff!” I tell my friends in PR and advertising about this and they recount similar stories. The people behind the PHD video (see clip below) have misjudged the…
The Evil That Men Do
In the wake of coming home from Poland and reconnecting, with an astonishing amount of clarity and detail, with my roots, I am finding it hard to adjust to the idea of April Fool’s Day when there seems to be so much capacity for evil in the world. Is humanity essentially evil? Are we really born this way? It’s hard to say for certain, but at the very least, how can one make jokes when we don’t know what’s going on in Ivory Coast, or when rapists, murderers and so on stalk the earth, or now that Moussa Koussa is…
A Borkowski March in Links
I’ve been in and out of the papers this month, commenting on a number of subjects, from the perils of PR spin on behalf of dictators to Sarah Ferguson’s latest misadventures by way of the redemption of Chris Brown and, since I’ve been in Poland, as mentioned in my previous blog, I hope you’ll pardon this blog being a brief monthly round up, just a collection of links. It’s still all interesting stuff, of course! Here’s my comment in the Independent on the risks of spinning for dictators. This is an article in Marketing Week on the rise of social…
What's In A Name?
What’s in a name? That’s the question I have been asking myself this week. Back in the day, I thought that trading under my name was a great idea. Some have challenged the conceit, but it was the need to create a family business that was my biggest inspiration. I was proud of my father and recognised his sacrifices, which enabled me to have the freedom of thought and mind to become a publicist. My mother never quite understood what my daily grind involved. She wondered why, if I loved media so much, I didn’t apply for a safe job…
Remembering Jay Landesman
I went to the wake for Jay Landesman yesterday evening and it was wonderful to see a collective spirit present and some great people gathered to pay tribute to the great man. Perry Benson was there; John Cooper Clarke paid tribute in his inimitable style; it was also great to see the amazing Jim Haynes, who founded the Arts Lab and co-founded International Times and the Suck newspaper, for the first time in many years. Jay was an astonishing man, embedded in the Hampstead and Islington literati to the hilt in the 60s, 70s and 80s. He’s one of those…
Because we all need a laugh sometimes…
Because it’s been an unrelenting year so far, and because we all need a good laugh, and because Victor Lewis Smith is a funny man, and because we always need reminding how awful Little Chef is, here’s Victor’s wonderful review of Little Chef from the Guardian six years ago. And here’s the link to the original.
Elizabeth Taylor: A Star Blinks Out
One of the last goddesses from the pantheon of great Hollywood stars has died. Let’s give thanks for the life of true movie icon Elizabeth Taylor. As a fledgling publicist I met her retinue at a film shoot at a long forgotten theatre, axed by funding cuts in another age. The encounter left an indelible mark on my psyche. Not then versed in the ways of celebrity, and unable to comprehend its hierarchy and protocol, I was transfixed by the legend that was Elizabeth Taylor, and the encounter with this uber-sleb ignited an innate curiosity in the ways of Hollywood…
OMG! Peaches Geldof and the Celebrity Heart of Darkness
I received an urgent comic tweet instructing me to watch OMG! with Peaches Geldof on ITV2 last night from my old pal Kevin O’Sullivan, aka @Tvkev the legendary Sunday Mirror TV critic. ‘You’ve got to watch this at least once!’ he said, so I tuned in with my two sons. We lasted a little under ten minutes – long enough to discover this is the worst thing on television. Vomiting uncontrollably or irritable bowl syndrome would be more entertaining than having to sit through OMG! again. A recent report from a mindless law firm desperate for some attention suggests there…
Bombing in Libya
As the bombs rain down on Libya, there are already people looking beyond the images of the destruction wreaked who are eager to get in to the country, post-conflict. Big PR will be planning already how to own the hearts and minds of the world with regards to Libya. There will be lots of meetings, lots of plans made and lots of meaty contracts to be carefully divvied up amongst shiny, eager contractors. Just like Iraq, there will be a lot of folk making a lot of money once the bombs have stopped dropping. It will be interesting to see…
Charity Mugging
Looking at the pictures of dedicated, anonymous plant workers risking their lives in Japan to prevent the meltdown of Fukushima’s reactor, I fell to thinking about all the unnamed heroes in the world, especially as it’s Comic Relief tonight. I find myself regretting that charity is so heavily reliant on celebrity to sell a good cause to the public. The media is feeding on the meltdown, on the possibility of apocalypse. 24/7 TV news has created its own disaster narrative, with little focus on the actual people putting their lives on the line. As for Comic Relief, the luvvie brigade…
The PR Apocalypse
Can I ask a dumb question – is it safe to build a nuclear power station on a known fault line and then leave it there for 40 years? The Japanese authorities are only finding out now, and yet the full horror of the situation remains shrouded and shadowed. As the Fukushima reactor appears to be slipping ever closer to meltdown, so an ever greater number of PR trained scientists and experts come forward to calm the situation. Who is paying the platoons of nuclear experts to play down the crisis? I’d love to see exactly who the paymaster to…
Cigarettes, Celebrities and Packaging the Future
This is an age of brand truth, an age of transparency. An era when all the nasty little secrets start to bustle about just below the surface in the hope of being exposed. Take Charlie Sheen, for example. He’s been a chaotic hellraiser for years, but only now is the extent of his hedonism and mania coming out, in a giddy rush. Or take the arrogance of Prince Andrew, which is coming out now and souring many of the deals he was hired to make, trading on hs royal status. It’s not just toxic celebrity that is being outed; the…
Remembering Jane Russell and the Man Behind Her Fame
The sad news that Jane Russell died lat night is perhaps an opportune time to remember the amazing publicist who moulded her erotic brand, the man who coined the politically incorrect moniker: bombshell. I hope many of Russell’s obituaries credit the strategic mind of another Russell, the Texan Russell Birdwell, for shaping Jane Russell’s narrative. Let’s not forget that behind every Hollywood icon there was an incredibly clever publicist. Birdwell was a poacher turned gamekeeper, lured away from the Hollywood Reporter to become publicity director for David O. Selznick. Birdwell created some of the most iconic publicity campaigns of the…
Churnalism and the Death of the Press Release
At long last the question of how much of our daily news originates from PR pixies is to be answered. A new website, churnalism.com, has been launched and its mission is to expose the extent to which articles have been lifted from press releases. I welcome the site – it’s not something good publicists should fear. In the spirit of transparency, I’m very comfortable to declare that on occasions I’ve let my imagination run riot. Once – or maybe even twice! – I have ensured that a dismal fact has not stood in the way of making a story work….