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 World Behind the 'Best Job in the World'
You couldn’t move anywhere this morning without hearing something about Ben Southall, the British winner of ‘The Best Job in the World’ and the string of idyllic desert islands along the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland, Australia, which will act as his home and office for six months. Not surprising, when the job is more like a paid holiday and earns him approximately £74,000! The campaign, run by Tourism Queensland, is a fine example of PR left to do what it does best – spread a positive story as far and wide as possible in a glowing…
Borkowski and Clifford Live Streaming Debate
I will be going head to head with Max Clifford to discuss the toxic nature of celebrity at the London College of Communication tonight and, if you don’t have a ticket – they sold out quickly – you’ll be glad to know you haven’t missed out! You can get involved in the heated and controversial debate as it will be streamed live on Ustream. If you want to see the debate, click on the following link this evening – the show starts at 6 p.m. http://www.ustream.tv/channel/Borkowski-Talks
Nothing Sacred: from Carole Lombard to Jade Goody
I enjoyed the launch of the Fame Formula paperback at the Riverside Studios at Hammersmith on Wednesday night for many reasons: it’s a great venue, the people who came were interested and interesting, it was good to expound on the brilliance of publicist extraordinaire Russell Birdwell to an audience and it was marvellous to see one of the films he promoted, Nothing Sacred, on a big screen for the first time. And what a film it is! It may have been made in 1937, but Nothing Sacred still resonates today, thanks to Ben Hecht’s razor sharp script and William Wellman’s…
The Twitter Pandemic and Swine Flu
Whilst I have no wish to denigrate the sense of loss the families of the 150 or so people who have died in Mexico must be feeling, I suspect that the reporting of the supposed Swine Flu pandemic is more hysterical by far than it needs to be and may in fact cause more problems than it solves. We are conditioned to respond to such hysterical outpourings as if we are living a disaster movie, as reports of Mexico City coming to a standstill prove. But this sort of fear is nothing new. Bear in mind that there was a…
The Art of Milking: Jade Goody in Shoreditch
Jade Goody’s not cold in her grave and already a “controversial” artist is leeching off her celebrity to generate some quick and dirty PR. News broke in the Hackney Gazette last week that performance artist Mark McGowan is organising a re-enactment of the final hours of Jade Goody’s life. It’s a pretty typical scam; the two-hour show will feature a performer lying on a bed donning a cardboard box as a head and will also feature artists playing the roles of Jackey Budden, Jade’s mother, her publicist Max Clifford and Jack Tweed, her husband. And, what a surprise, it’s opening…
McBride and Prejudice
A week has passed and it amazes me that there has been as much surprise at – and media condemnation of – Damien McBride’s attempts to slur the opposition as there has been. Surely this sort of thing, in one form or another has been going on for years? I’m not suggesting I approve of McBride’s attempts to dismantle the reputations of the Tories, but this is far from the first time that it’s happened. Gordon Brown may have expressed his apologies, may have “ensured that there are new rules so that this cannot happen again” but Westminster is a…
Twits who ruin Twitter: Why some stars and PRs miss the point of tweeting
“Britney’s feed is sanitised, tedious vainglory, merely a bland sales pitch” By Mark Borkowski – Monday 13th April Cynical: Britney’s Twitter feed is merely putting out a bland sales pitch, with the sort of information that can be gleaned from anywhere I’m waiting for the first big Twitter catastrophe. And if you think it came from the hackers who worked into the instant messaging site in January and gave away access to the live output of celebrity Twitterers – from Barack Obama to Britney Spears – you’d be wrong. The real disaster is going to come from the carpetbaggers and…
Fame Formula BBC Breakfast
I appeared on BBC Breakfast TV on Monday talking about the Fame Formula
Rebranding the pollack as Colin: oceans away from a Consignia-style disaster
My first Guardian piece thanks to followers on Twitter. People have genuinely and generously given me their thoughts on the worst rebranding they could think of which enabled me to write this piece. Thank you all of you. Ahh the power of Twitter. Consignia? Monday? Choco Krispies? All failed rebrands – but Sainsbury’s renaming pollack as Colin should fare better. God bless Sainsbury’s, whose environmental passion has created a feeding frenzy on the rebranding of pollack – which will now be known as Colin (pronounced co-lan), the French name for a related breed of fish. This well-timed story proved tempting…
The Fame Formula: Cooking With Bacon
The Fame Formula paperback promotional rounds started last night with an interview on BBC Radio 5 on Richard Bacon’s show. It was fun doing it with Boyd Hilton from Heat magazine and Richard was a real pro. It was a good way to start off the promotional rounds. I was pleased that Richard liked the book and enjoyed the sizzling banter, which riffed off yesterday’s blog about rescue plans for Fred Goodwin as well as others. To find out about more upcoming promotional events for the paperback of The Fame Formula, click here. To buy the paperback, which is available…
Rescuing the Reputation of Sir Fred Goodwin
If you thought the Enron fiasco was PR hell or that Starbucks charging rescue workers at Ground Zero for coffee was a publicity disaster, spare a thought for Sir Fred ‘the Shred’ Goodwin, whose PR strategy, in the wake of the collapse of RBS and his monster pension, has amounted to little more than ducking below the parapet of his ivory tower and hoping that all the nasty things being said about him in the press will go away. He has no chance of that happening since the protestors came out and stoned his Edinburgh home. His is the high…
The Shredding of Sir Fred
In the wake of the attacks on Sir Fred Goodwin’s Edinburgh home, apparently by a group calling themselves Bank Bosses Are Criminals, it’s clear that the attacks on Fred the Shred are a necessary distraction for the Government, who are looking for ways to recoup their status in the wake of the banking disaster and are gladly hiding behind his him and letting him take the blame. But the biggest PR concern in the affair is the amount of money Goodwin is spending on the two slick and expensive PR people who are keeping his head below the parapet. They…
Sofa Wars
The King and Queen of Morning TV have been ripped apart in a plot worthy of Shakespeare. Money, greed, deceit, jealousy, subterfuge and high drama are driving this scenario, as if an excitable new scriptwriter with grand designs has been drafted in to rescue a failing soap. The vigour is intoxicating. Fern Britton has quit This Morning because she is fed up with being in Philip Schofield’s shadow. The screaming headlines are a sub-editor’s wet dream; Fern’s sensational walkout has fractured her relationship with ITV chiefs. Rows in TV are fantastic copy for the dailies, but never a good thing…
Run away with the Facebook circus
Published Wednesday 25 March 2009 at 09:25 by Mark Borkowski Familiar with Facebook and always available to Twitter, PR guru Mark Borkowski says there is no excuse for promoters to ignore the endless advertising possibilities of social networking sites It may seem strange to be talking about 19th century impresario Phineas Taylor Barnum in the middle of the social networking revolution, but the more I see of how live entertainment marketing and PR is applying itself to the Facebook and Twitter generation, the more I realise that we could all learn a lesson from him. http://www.thestage.co.uk/features/feature.php/23917/run-away-with-the-facebook-circus
Beatwax @ Borkowski
And now for some fantastic news! Borkowski will – from April 1st – be bringing the ideas and execution consultancy Beatwax into the Borkowski fold, completing our expansion plans and allowing us to further develop complementary creative solutions for our clients. I’ve admired the work of Beatwax for a long time – their stunt to promote The Simpsons Movie, placing a huge Homer Simpson next to the Cerne Abbas Giant made it into my book, The Fame Formula, as an example of the sort of stunt that continues the work of the great publicists. Their recent, stunning campaign for Paramount,…
The Fame Formula paperback and competition
These are exciting times for The Fame Formula; the book is due out in paperback in a couple of weeks and I’m enjoying seeing proofs come in from the publishers (it’s looking good!) and also the Fame Formula competition is coming to a close. What’s particularly pleasurable about the competition is that not only is it very difficult to decide a winner – there are several entries that are strong contenders and, as a consequence, the choice is going to be very hard indeed – but there are also a number of strong, exciting entries still coming in. A good…
Jacko and the power of Twitter
Michael Jackson’s done it again, surprising all the nay sayers who had written him off as a wash-out and a has-been. He’s sold out 50 dates at the O2 arena and will, assuming everything goes according to plan, play to around a million fans over that period. Clearly all the web chatter on Twitter and other social networking sites has helped; this has been the venue for the hardcore fans of Jacko to turn the tables on the now-isolated traditional media who had written the newly re-crowned King of Pop off in the wake of court cases, alleged child abuse…
Off the wall but still invincible
Despite the rumours, the accusations, the lawsuits, the increasing physical weirdness, the King of Pop’s return to the stage in London promises to be ‘the biggest comeback since Lazarus’. And he hasn’t even got a new album Elizabeth Day The Observer, Sunday 8 March 2009 Article historyIt seemed strangely appropriate that on the same day as the Bank of England confirmed it would be issuing £75bn of new banknotes, the self-styled King of Pop Michael Jackson announced his return to the world stage. Both events, in their own way, seemed a licence to print money. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/mar/08/michael-jackson-profile-pop-culture
Off the wall but still invincible
Despite the rumours, the accusations, the lawsuits, the increasing physical weirdness, the King of Pop’s return to the stage in London promises to be ‘the biggest comeback since Lazarus’. And he hasn’t even got a new album Elizabeth Day The Observer, Sunday 8 March 2009 Article historyIt seemed strangely appropriate that on the same day as the Bank of England confirmed it would be issuing £75bn of new banknotes, the self-styled King of Pop Michael Jackson announced his return to the world stage. Both events, in their own way, seemed a licence to print money. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/mar/08/michael-jackson-profile-pop-culture