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.
England's World Cup: Hype or Hope?
Forty-eight hours can feel like an eternity when your brand is in the centrifugal force in the maelstrom of public ridicule. In poor old Robert Green’s case, the error he committed by fumbling a save and letting in a dismal equalising goal in the World Cup match against the USA will plague him for the rest of his life. Still, at least Green is English, where all he faces is ridicule and crushing, sweaty disappointment. In 1994, Columbian footballer Andrés Escobar was murdered after scoring an own goal in the World Cup. If England fail to progress, Green is likely…
Brunswick and BP: PR and Responsibility
Scathing and probing headlines are continuing to castrate and castigate BP’s hapless crisis PR endeavours, further to my blog of the other day. Disapproving chatter clutters the web and denunciatory journalists, bloggers and commentators continue to feed on the corporate leviathan’s swift downward trajectory. The latest casualty in the ongoing debate about the oil spill fiasco is the global PR financial shop Brunswick. Alan Parker’s stately independent whale has made a habit of maintaining the lowest of profiles. Accomplished, circumspect and effective, Brunswick are respected in the financial orbit for their tactful and discreet diplomacy. The company have successfully produced…
How to Keep Your Head in Advertising
The Media Buying world is clearly in need of some PR help to drag it out of the 1980s. I found myself reading, jaw dropping to the table, this Media Week article by MediaCom’s Claudine Collins. It’s as if it had been ghosted by Charlie Brooker, Chris Morris and Helen Fielding – it reads like an unholy alliance between Bridget Jones’s Diary and Nathan Barley. Snippets like “Later, the Telegraph’s party goes to dinner at the Goring Hotel in Victoria, where I sit next to Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6 – it is a real-life James Bond moment”…
Cornwall: In Need of a PR Polish
There was no blog yesterday because I was in the heart of Cornwall, the jewel in Britain’s tourism crown, talking PR with a group of Cornish business people in Rick Stein’s fabulous Fish and Chip shop in Falmouth. The last time I spent this much time in a chippy was with an elephant and the Beverley Sisters. One thing came to light, however; no matter how much business development and PR front one puts on something, that thing is only as good as the people who work for it. It’s as true of Cornwall as it is of any other…
Bhopal: Is the Long Wait for Justice Over?
It’s a relief to see a little justice being meted out over Bhopal, only 20 or more years too late. The long-standing avoidance of justice is a major stain on the PR industry, bearing in mind how integral PR was in keeping the case out of the courts over the last 25 years. The Indian unit of US chemicals firm Union Carbide has been found guilty of negligence and seven former employees have been fined and jailed for two years, although it’s all too little too late for the families of those affected by the gas disaster. The PR companies…
Will the Revolution Not Be Advertised?
It may be stating the bleeding obvious, but we all know the media is changing rapidly – every few months, something comes along that fractures the old order more and more. The latest is the iPad, one more thing in a long line of technological advances that are making it easier for brand and public to connect without the need of the old certainties. So what will shape the future? And who will shape it? The screaming headline in PR Week warning of ad agencies encroaching on PR territory misses the point a little, I feel. A good PR agency…
BP: Where PR Fears to Tread
As BP’s reputation slips further down the plughole, its PR strategy is beginning to look like an envelope without an address on it. The comms department believe big emotions come from big statistics. Lazy damage limitation tactics are fuelling the storm – they should be pouring oil on troubled waters metaphorically rather than allowing it to happen all too literally and panicking about how to respond. And that’s the essence of it; the battalions of BP’s PR flaks are doomed because of the failure to fix Ground Zero. There’s a very thin line between success and failure in PR. For…
Advertising and Prohibition
There’s growing concern, and a fair amount of hand wringing, about alcohol advertising and the possibility of banning it. It looks like the glory days of inventive, witty and satirical booze advertising may be over for good. This would be very, very sad. Ban them and yes, you’ll get column inches. Keep them and you’ll bring thousands of people joy. There have been some hugely influential, wonderful and funny booze adverts over the years – just think of the often-surreal Guinness campaigns, or of Carling and Heineken’s best efforts. It would be a terrible shame to lose these creative campaigns…
Aid Ships, Oil Slicks and PR Wars
The confidence and utter belief in the State of Israel the Israeli government have displayed, as they justify their violent attack on the ships attempting to bring aid to Gaza, is breathtaking. Both factions in any war tend towards insanity of some sort, but Israel organise theirs with terrifying rigour. They have an enormous number of silent supporters waging their PR war for them, and some not-so-silent ones. Take the NeoCon pollster and political consultant Frank Luntz, for example. After the Gulf War, he advised American Jewish leaders to incorporate mention of Iraq into every mention made of Israel because…
Laws of Attrition
New media commentators have decreed that the age of the personal PR minder is dead. “Long live Twitter” is their clarion call. It’s the new communication tool for folk in the public eye. Openness and willingness to feed the twitter cycle offers an opportunity to unveil the ‘real you’; to be judged as well as to engage in an open, public conversation. Who needs a flak when you talk directly to the people? The evidence that stellar Twitter personalities – in the shape of Ashton Kutcher, Jonathan Ross, Stephen Fry and Sarah Brown – have benefited from this thesis is…
Thinking Circular with the Smooth FM PM
David Cameron is THE great communicator in the new era of politics. His effortless performance on the Today programme earlier must have sent a shiver down the spine of the journalistic community. How will they get at this moderate, articulate, confident, unflappable and frankly relentless Old Etonian OK, Dave is enjoying surfing on the bubbly froth of post-election hype and confidence, but frankly he is a fit-for-purpose, well-designed, media-facing PM. A shiny Middle England man in an M&S suit broadcasting his POV like a airline pilot transmitting a pre-flight weather forecast. Evan Davis could not get a word in edgeways…
BP PR: Too Slick or Not Too Slick?
BP’s PR machine has been in overdrive of late; their latest effort at saying “look how hard we’re working to sort the oil spill out” is a live roving webcam monitoring the clean-up effort. I’ve tried to go on it but it’s never operational – either broken or offline. Whether that’s by overload of people looking or by design remains to be seen. I wonder what Barnum would have done? Yesterday, I went to see an exhibition on him for the 200th anniversary of his birth in Sheffield at the National Circus and Fairground archive at the University of Sheffield, run…
How to Share in a Coalition
The Treasury team stepped out into the sunshine to announce George Osborne’s raft of cuts which aim to make recovery a sure thing – a wise move, as it’s always easier to disguise bad news in good weather. There was a fair bit of tough news to swallow all round, but what intrigued me was the way that Osborne deferred to Lib Dem Chief Secretary to the Treasury, David Laws, when it came to handing out the truly hard-to-swallow news. This is where the coaltion comes into its own for the Tories; they have more seats and more cabinet members…
Sarah Ferguson: Shooting Hangers-On in a Barrel
So Sarah Ferguson has been turned over by the News of the World this morning? Reading the front page, it was as much as I could do not to yawn. Yet another sorry tale of money grubbing in Banana Republic GB. The cash for access sting is unsurprising; it indicates that some people close to the Royals see it as a right to leverage their access for cash. Yes, it’s a ruthless turnover and it just about ticks the public interest box – but wake up, cronies; this is what the NOTW does, so very well.
Cleggameron: How Calm is Their Coalition?
Clegg and Cameron are making a surprisingly good fist of unity thanks to the brand new and shiny PR machines behind the scenes, not to mention the PR machine that is Cleggameron. It’s working so well that even Rory Bremner admits to being unsure about how to satirise them. I can’t help but feel a little unease at the way they present themselves, and the PR wheels running the Cleggameron image juggernaut. I wonder if this honeymoon period will last longer than the usual ones – remember Tony Blair amiably wandering down Downing Street predicting that by the time he…
Manga Monsters and Risky PR
Looking carefully at the one-eyed Manga nightmares that are the 2012 Olympic mascots, I have been wondering at the designers’ thinking – and not as negatively as you might suspect. I think there may be a classicist at work behind these Cyclopses. According to Hesiod, the Cyclopses were strong, stubborn giants who were “abrupt of emotion” – they were also synonyms for brute strength and power, and their name was invoked in connection with massive masonry. I wonder if these mighty mythological monsters are what inspired the designers to create the Olympic Terrortubbies? Are they meant to symbolise mighty marketing?…
Lineker's Sporting Stance
Top PR marks to Gary Lineker for withdrawing from writing his column for the Mail on Sunday in protest over their handling of the Lord Triesman story. Lineker has done the right thing by distancing himself as effectively as possible from the Mail on Sunday’s stance – even though they have offered him the opportunity to keep the column and still criticise them explicitly. His departure, from an extremely well paid job, sends the clearest possible signal to the paper’s editorial – and to the paper’s readers – that he is serious when he says: “I think this story goes…
A Design is for Life, Not Just the Olympics
The London Olympics committee launch the 2012 Olympic mascot tonight on the One Show and everyone with an interest in design is hoping that it’s not a dog’s breakfast, like the logo, which looks, most unfortunately, like an abstracted version of a Simpsons porn cartoon as drawn by a committee, all of whom were wearing blindfolds. That they are launching the mascot on the One Show is a good sign – they realise that they need to get momentum underway to keep the Olympic brand in the public eye in as positive a way as possible. It’s absolutely wonderful PR,…
Kiss and Tell Nation
There’s quite an outpouring of anger in the wake of Melissa Jacobs’ kiss and tell on Lord Triesman – some of it is even being directed at Max Clifford, who is attempting to sail over the affair with the caveat that he was only doing his job. It’s worth bearing in mind that, had this been a high-ranking politician, people would be doing all they could to find out whether Jacobs had planned this and would be doing all they could to destroy her. As it stands, it is unlikely to get investigated fully and the only true losers will…
How to Save Public Figures from Sex Scandals and Themselves
The collapse of Lord Triesman – and potentially the British 2018 World Cup bid he was in charge of – after a fit of sexual hubris and some seriously careless talk about bribery, brought on by the less-than-sincere attentions of a younger woman, is a sorry story, but a familiar one. This is a story that highlights the lack of investment in PR at the highest level. There’s an awful lot of bollocks talked about stories that are ‘so important’ that you can do trades with the papers on them, with shadowy publicists portrayed as Fagin types hand-rubbing and smirking…