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 New SuperCop Steps Up
Every new head of a public institution leaps up to sit at the head of the table humming a new tune and Sir Paul Stephenson is no exception. The new ‘super-cop’ who is taking on the poisoned Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police chalice, spat in so publicly by the bumbling Sir Ian Blair, has given an inaugural press conference setting out his stall. The media takeaway is that he is no celebrity cop. Unlike his predecessor, he claims that he is going to get on with the job. There’ll be no TV appearances, just the old, traditional values of public…
Reality Show Rehab: Car Crash TV
The ghost of Barnum is stalking TV land, as a new show displaying the dark and slightly freakish side of celebrity seems to be proving: Living TV’s Rehab. And some less-than-A list celebrities are queuing up to take part. One, who was turned down, was apparently eager to get on the show and discuss their sex addiction, but Living TV seems to have repulsed this entrant in favour of more damaged celebrities. So Peter Sellers’ daughter Victoria is in, combating drug addiction, alongside the alcoholics Les McKeown from the Bay City Rollers, Robin Le Mesurier, son of John Le Mesurier…
The BBC and Aid for Gaza
Listening to Mark Thompson on this morning’s Today programme, justifying the corporation’s decision not to allow the broadcast of an appeal on behalf of the Disasters Emergency Committee for Gaza, I was distressed. The thrust of his argument was that he didn’t want the BBC’s impartiality being damaged. I am not sure about the semantics but I fail to grasp how is the BBC’s impartiality would be prejudiced by asking others to raise money for the victims of an act of war, by a state using the most lethal arsenal of weaponry against a defenseless population. The only crumb of…
The Fame Formula in The Financial Times
There’s a short review of The Fame Formula in the Financial Times on 23rd January. Stephen Cave also discusses Fame by Mark Rowlands and The Star as Icon: Celebrity in the Age of Mass Consumption by Daniel Herwitz. “It’s these myths [of the iconic early Hollywood stars] that are exploded by Mark Borkowski in his jolly romp The Fame Formula: How Hollywood’s Fixers, Fakers and Star Makers Created the Celebrity Industry.” writes Cave. “His book celebrates the publicists – the myth-makers who turned Hollywood’s patchy raw material into household names. Running his own PR firm, Borkowski has an insider’s eye, and his…
Cutting Back in the Ramsay Empire
Gordon Ramsay’s given up his flak-managing flack Gary Farrow as part of a series of moves that see him scaling down his spending and financially restructuring his massive empire under the management of his father-in-law, Chris Hutcheson. This may come as something of a blow for Farrow in these recessionary times; his skill with crisis management has seen Ramsay through some hard times, not least the revelation of an affair with Sarah Symonds last year, but it’s the sort of thing that should come as no surprise to a seasoned publicist. It’s the sort of move that has happened time…
Little Chef Shafts Big Chef
When über-chef Heston Blumenthal III was asked to wave his magic wooden spoon over the roadside diner Little Chef, I raised my eyes to the gods. ‘What a gift for the production company,’ I thought. ‘Brilliant fly-on-the-wall telly at the expense of a tired old brand; we’ll be chuckling all the way to bed.’ How wrong can an old git be? “Big Chef takes on Little Chef” has turned out to be a publicity coup. Middle class angst about the sort of food that Little Chef offer is in no way representative of what most people want. The reality is…
Rebecca Adlington to be new face of Speedo
British Olympic gold medallist Rebecca Adlington will be announced as the new face of swimwear brand Speedo on Thursday, according to the Telegraph. Adlington will join Michael Phelps, who won a world record eight golds at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, as Speedo’s official face of the world’s biggest swimwear brand. Phelps has been sponsored by Speedo since he was 16 and received a $1 million bonus for winning over seven gold medals in a single Olympic Games as part of the contract. After securing her medals in China it was predicted that companies such as BP and BT could offer…
Winehouse in good publicity shock
All publicity is good publicity, the cliché tells us. In fact the cliché jumps up and down and insists that this is so and has been known to stamp its foot if anyone disagrees, as news from St. Lucia proves. The Caribbean island, as any celebrity-watcher should be able to tell you, is the latest haunt of choice of Amy Winehouse, who has been taking her leisure there in the form of imbibing copious amounts of alcohol, crawling around the hotel, begging for drinks from other guests of the Le Sport Spa (where she claims to have gone for her…
Dark Satanic Press Release Mills
A new year, a new American President, a new sense of austerity and asperity pervading the world and yet still no sign that sections of the PR world are little more than spam-merchants, pumping out press releases at the mill without any thought or caution, any sense of building the brand. Press releases promoting all sorts of tenuous fluff are churned out daily at these dark, satanic mills and the fog they create smothers the good, creative, insightful and careful work of the many of the conscientious publicity agencies out there. The real problem is that the general public and…
The Sexy Factor
Femail Magazine January 15th 2009 Rachel Porter asked a panel of experts to give their waspish views on Cheryl Cole, Dannii Minogue, Kelly Brook and Amanda Holden, on which of the four should be crowned the queen of reality TV. Mark Borkowski, PR guru and author of the Fame Formula, a history of the Hollywood Publicists commented on their public image saying…… “Cheryl Cole: Hard working, talented and beautiful, she’s an inspirational figure. Beleaguered by marital problems, she had the public’s sympathy as well as their respect when she stormed on to the X Factor, preparted to take on Simon…
King of the High Street risks repeat of a reality TV disaster
That is the risk Sainsbury’s chief executive Justin King seems prepared to take after leading his supermarket through the economic storm to record its best Christmas ever while most rivals struggled. With King tipped to return to his old stomping ground of Marks & Spencer to replace outgoing Sir Stuart Rose as chief executive, the Channel 4 series, I’m Running Sainsbury’s, could add yet more polish to his increasingly gleaming reputation. Or it could make him look a complete fool. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-1111613/King-High-Street-risks-repeat-reality-TV-disaster.html
Ronnie O' Sullivan says snooker has gone to pot
The protagonists dress as if they were auditioning for jobs as cruise ship entertainers. The atmosphere has all the excitement of a wet Wednesday in Bognor; as for the pace of the game itself – well, put it like this: a bad game on a slow day makes the average funeral procession look like the Epsom Derby. Small wonder, then, that Ronnie O’Sullivan, the world snooker champion, believes that the sport is in desperate need of some showbusiness flair to save it from a slow death. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/article5505389.ece
Prince Harry and the Racist Remarks
How disappointing to read about Prince Harry’s use of racist language in the press over the weekend, not so much because it’s Harry – it’s no surprise, really, that he’s prone to calling people ‘Paki’ and ‘Raghead’ in fun, given that his idea of fun has seen him dressing in Nazi uniform for parties – but because such language, behaviour and petty racism is still deemed worthy, at best, of only a mild rebuke by the Fourth Estate and by a worrying percentage of the public, as, by and large, the reactions to the News of the World story on…
Stuntwatch: The Art of the Sickie
Stunt of the week is the Benylin website and ad campaign advising people on how to take sickies and call in sick to work under the tag line ‘Take a Benilyn Day’ – click here to see what advice they offer. There’s been quite a hoo-ha in the media about the campaign, which is completely tongue in cheek; the obviousness of this makes the CBI guy’s outrage (in the BBC News footage you can see by clicking here) hilarious – even Fiona Bruce was sniggering when she was reading it out on the BBC’s 10 O’Clock news. Great PR.
The Bollywood Fame Formula
The Fame Formula – due out in paperback in April – got a good mention in The Hindu at the end of last year, in an article on the changing nature of publicity in the Bollywood movie industry. “Public relations specialist Dale Bhagwagar believes that public relation campaigns will soon be the way that many clients will go instead of marketing and advertising, especially in the financial climate today. ‘As more and more people realise the cost-effectiveness of PR campaigns, their attention will shift from the expensive ad campaigns to PR strategies and placements.’ “But film publicists are a mysterious…
Morris Man Crisis Meets Disney Orgy
Yesterday, searching online, I rediscovered the pornographic Disney poster, The Disneyland Memorial Orgy, from 60s counterculture magazine The Realist and started to think about the ways in which brands operate in the 21st century. Looking at this poster, as well as at an article in the Telegraph suggesting that Morris dancing could die out in 20 years because not enough young people are taking up the bladder and getting in to the spirit of the thing, I began to consider the way brands protect themselves and how rigidity is likely to cause their downfall. Disney never sued Paul Krassner, who…
What to Read in 2009
Ruby Warrington’s guide to what’s hot in 2009, printed in the Sunday Times’ prestigious Style magazine yesterday, is replete with a plethora of interesting things to watch out for this year. As she puts it: “A new year. A whole new set of values, a new generation of icons, new pin-ups to lust after, new tunes to hum, new fitness fads to buy into, new places to escape to and new things to feed your friends. Good riddance o-eight, we’re ready to embrace the shiny new year of nine. Here are some of the things we’re most excited about.” The…
A Year of Change
2008 has crunched to a close and, this morning, large parts of Britain have woken to a clean sheet of snow, covering most of the names and ideas that haunted, plagued or invigorated us last year. Buried under that sheet are names, soundbites, happenings, ideas and all the briefly-gripping themes that cluttered up 2008. All of them seemed so important as the old year sputtered out but now they are little more than footnotes, dark specks that poke insignificantly and occasionally from beneath the blank white slate of 2009. The news agenda has moved on, cruelly swift in its search…
Pope Benedict latest PR mistake
Is there any modern communicators walking the corridors of the Vatican? Clearly, 21st century media advice is in short supply. Was the Holy Father made aware of the dangers in his end-of-year speech to senior Vatican staff? There has been some unfortunate fallout this morning, after his decree that “saving” humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour is just as important as saving the rainforests was made public. The take away seems to be that the Pope is spreading fear that gay people somehow threaten the planet. Stand by for his Christmas message, hopefully it will address the real issues that…
Fame for nothing: how the Iraqi shoe chucker will be remembered (or not)
“Shoe-throwing man is now his brand–He should be sent all over the world to throw shoes at people we don’t like.” — Mark Borkowski on how the Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at President Bush can create tongue-in-cheek commercial gain from his fleeting fame Listen to show