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.
Lies, damned lies and Labour
Editors must put their feet down, cease attending jollies and pursuing knighthoods and insist their journalists hold a magnifying glass up to every scrap of propaganda No 10 produces from now on http://media.guardian.co.uk/marketingandpr/comment/0,7494,1490418,00.html
Hello? You want payment, publicity and your privacy?
Last week’s judgment in the legal battle between OK! and Hello! threw the future of the buy-up into doubt and raised a whole new set of questions about the rights of celebrities who do deals with the media. So where does the press go from here? We canvassed expert opinion http://news.independent.co.uk/media/story.jsp?story=640284 Mark Borkowski Head of Borkowski PR The enormous pay-outs have waned. There’s a lot of bullshit talked about money but it ain’t as good as you think. Circulations are down and magazines and newspapers are going for economies of scale.
Everything under the Sun
This week’s Tony and Cherie interview in the Sun shows just why Blair is the PR star performer of this election while Howard and Kennedy are also-rans In a stunning publicity coup Britain’s CEO and his wife Cherie’s “first ever joint interview” straddled the Sun yesterday with a combination of finesse and brutishness the PR world can only gaze at with awe.
RATNER & THE BOTTOM LINE
Difficult to miss Gerald Ratner at the Royal Albert Hall last week returning to the scene of the crime. The epic brick-drop which saw the Ratner brand trashed Hiroshima-style by a couple of careless comments from its Chief Executive is the stuff of legend. Ratner, remember, was being amazingly successful at the time of his gaffe. Over confident, and indeed, showing off, he must have had no concept of the furies he unleashed.
The Groucho Club twenty years on
Inside Story: The Groucho Club – 20 years of schmoozing and boozing From riding bicycles down the stairs to setting fire to their chest hair, Groucho members describe the club they love so much that some of them even married the staff MARK BORKOWSKI, PUBLICIST I’ve been a member since it opened. I rubbed together the few pennies I had at the time and got myself a youth membership. http://news.independent.co.uk/media/story.jsp?story=635029
Borkowski the secret of my success
I’ ve always been happy to take risks, and that includes inventing (and killing off) a dancing dog Read the article from the Evening Standard 28th April 2005 Download file
Is this the end of brand Beckham?
Is this the end of brand Beckham? Scotsman – Edinburgh,Scotland,UK Leading PR man Mark Borkowski, whose clients include Vodafone, Peugeot and Virgin Megastores, is more optimistic for Posh and Becks.
Pizza the action
Pizza Express’s cheese-and-basil portraits of the party leaders brought a welcome element of fun to the lacklustre election campaign. What price spontaneity? In this most choreographed of election campaigns, anything that jumps out of the woodwork or off the plate to surprise us is a blessed relief.
Who's absolutely fabulous in PR?
Inside Story: Who’s absolutely fabulous in PR? They’re the people you rely on to make your name or your new product shine in the media spotlight, but who would they pick out as the cream of their crop? MARK BORKOWSKI: BORKOWSKI PR CLIENTS INCLUDE: SELFRIDGES; TISCALI; VODAFONE; PEUGEOT; VIRGIN MEGASTORES “Unfortunately, there are no great publicists left. It’s now incredibly difficult to create a distinctive company culture and too many people are in PR to get rich quick. Far too many companies are happy to play second fiddle to the ad and marketing companies, instead of leading the modern media…
The honeymoon's over, Charles
I always knew they’d get the PR right for the day. Nobody does events on that scale like we British do, so the prince and the princess (as the wife of a prince is known) could always rely on the organisational skills of the various serfs and comptrollers to deliver the goods when the moment came.
A brouhaha and a Who hoo-ha
I couldn’t help feeling a touch of nostalgia and even sadness last week as two once mighty icons competed for the headlines as they dillied and dallied and were ultimately both diminished by mishandled PR. Instead of being forthright and bold, Doctor Who, back on earth in a pretty respectable format and to some decent reviews, revealed out of the blue that his latest manifestation in Christopher Eccleston was only doing one series. What a waste of everybody’s time.
The new McDonald scam
Spring is here and with it comes news of a potentially great publicity stunt. McDonald’s intends to embrace the Urban music scene by offering an extra royalty of “between $1 and $5” to bands getting radio airplay of songs which include a reference to the famous “Big Mac” hamburger.
NOW YOU C.I.A… NOW YOU DON’T.
Oh how we lapped it up. It was just before Christmas 2003, and I’m sure the US administration felt it deserved a lovely present. I know the British tabloids did. ‘Eight months after Baghdad fell, US soldiers found the dishevelled former leader of Iraq six feet under, hiding in a hole in the ground.’ claimed CNN. ‘He wasn’t very tough…he had a pistol but didn’t use it…in fact he didn’t put up any fight at all.’
Rooney's girl gets a Vogue makeover
With her furry boots and girl-next-door looks, Coleen McLoughlin is an unlikely choice for the cover of global style bible Vogue.
A GREAT IDEA AT THE TIME? NEVER!
Jordan must have thought she’d be a shoe-in for Eurovision. She was so confident she said she’d leave the country if she lost. The bookies were so confident they had her as hot favorite. The News of the World was so confident it printed a story saying she’d won.
Confidence tricks
From the Media Weekly Independent Newspaper In the Sixties he turned hoaxing from stunt into fine art, and that’s why Joey Skaggs is Mark Borkowski’s mentor
Smacking a gift-horse in the mouth
Like greedy children stuffing themselves sick with party bag chocolate, the Academy award nominees and their accountants are set to discover that nothing in this life comes for free
Why do PRs carry the can?
When something goes wrong, it’s always a ‘PR disaster’, and it’s not fair, says Mark Borkowski Every now and then, someone knocks up a list of “the most unpopular professions”, and journalists get to write about themselves for a change. Hacks, to whom the prefix “seedy” now seems to have become irretrievably attached, invariably top the list, above politicians and estate agents. What they’ve all got in common, of course, is that the public don’t trust them: they don’t believe a word they say. What is strange is that PRs have so far escaped the list.
No Business is worth monkey business
Pepsi’s latest ad has roused the ire of an animal rights group because it features a chimpanzee, but both sides stand to gain from the resulting publicity Pepsi cannot have failed to second guess the reaction in the wake of the banned Puma ad
Chartered Institute of Public Relations
How do you pronounce the acronym CIPR? Let’s think. It looks like the front half of one of my favourite hotels, the Cipriani in Venice. Yes. I think ‘chipper’ is the right way to say ‘CIPR’, and a quick glance at Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang reveals that since 1837 ‘chipper’ has carried the meaning ‘WELL FIT, LIVELY’. Are you feeling CIPR today?