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.
DEUCE OF AN EVENING
Pleasant crowd of sporty types gathered in the Groucho the other night for some serious old fashioned stiffening on champagne and tequila before putting themselves through the Wimbledon premier – Angus Deayton, Tony Hawks, Aldo Zilli, Chris Evans, Anabelle Croft (as expert witness?) and Penny Smith from GMTV. Are they all tennis fans? Guess so. Rumour has it the movie is a lot more fun than industry gossip would like us to believe, and happily the Americans have been swarming to it in encouraging numbers, putting it in 4th position in the US charts after its first weekend outing in…
Private View PR
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STUNTMANIA…
…Rules OK? From Batman to the Sun Bomber to Otis Ferry & the Chambermen, the newspapers are now gorging themselves on Stunt. This is the outcome of what must have been a feast of secret planning over what the rest of us thought was just the Silly Season. The invasion of the House of Commons, the first since Charles Ist’s time, as they keep telling us, was an extraordinary example of Middle England trying to make its voice heard against the swagger of urban journalism and the sheer might of Blair’s majority. He’d best make the most of it, because…
CAN'T BUY ME LOVE
Tucked away in PR week is a sad little paragraph about Geoff Baker getting the sack from Sir Paul McCartney’s organisation MPL. The two have parted company after a solid association lasting 15 years, and as of now Baker is unemployed. ‘His behaviour has not reached the professional standards I had come to expect from Geoff’ said the former Beatle, ‘and it is with regret that I am forced to end our relationship’. The kind of commitment required to manage ‘media relations’ on behalf of an international megastar of Macca’s calibre cannot be exaggerated. The smooth progress of developing positive…
Command and control
The snap that came with a catch Mark Borkowski, a veteran publicist, said that it is now “the norm” for exclusive pictures to be released to the media with stipulations about how they are to be used. If the Royal Family is embracing the ways of celebrity PR, he is only surprised that it hasn’t done so before. “They should recognise their power and the media’s need,” he said, adding that “command and control is a feature of the royal media operation”. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/16/nmed16.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/09/16/ixhome.html
Batman
The history of direct action is a proud one, taking in the likes of Peter Tatchell, Greenpeace and Swampy. Many feature very brave individuals � think of those campaigners on their tiny inflatable boat heading out to tackle a huge tanker or whaler. And it does work. The bottom line is that here we are, reading, talking, writing and generally thinking about the Fathers4Justice stunt. We�ve also been looking at the photographs, and it was fascinating yesterday to se which editors ran Batman but refused to display his banner. Their attitude � the Times, the Express, and others � was…
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
There was an old fashioned feeling to the Groucho last night, in which diminutive terpsichordist Wayne Sleep and Mexican-speaking beardo Rory McGrath very nearly came to blow, blows sorry. ‘I wouldn’t put my **** anywhere near your mouth’ shouted David at Goliath. How very nostalgic. And Gordon Ramsey was in the brasserie so the food must be improving big time. One day earlier this year a larger-than-life caricature of a 1950s Broadway producer, cigar, bling, limo etc. swept into our offices seeking advice on staging a Puerto Rico salsa musical his heiress wife had written. The piece was named ‘Murderous…
Palace coup
Royal StuntWatch: How do you get serious national coverage for your chosen cause? Dress up as a comic book character Love them or loathe them, there’s no denying that members of campaign group Fathers 4 Justice have done an award-winning job in hijacking the nation’s, if not the world’s, attention. As a public relations coup, it ranks as one of the most successful in recent times: an audacious yet unfeasibly simply plan, quickly executed with a touch of humour and a serious message with a knock-on effect for the not entirely inconsequential matter of national security.
What's so funny?
What’s so funny? Mario Testino’s 20th-birthday portrait of Prince Harry with his brother and father shows the three royals sharing a joke. But is that all that’s going on? We ask the experts for their analysis Mark Borkowski PR expert Prince Harry’s official 20th-birthday photograph is the tried-and-tested, safe PR route favoured by the royal family and, in particular, Kensington Palace: arty, clever, moody pictures selling the happy Wales household. The basic problem is that Harry and William hate the media and what they did to their mother. But what the press office is telling them is that they have…
‘This Morning’ this morning.
‘This Morning’ this morning. Invited on to ‘This Morning’ with the smart n savvy Lorraine Kelly and Philip Schofield. ‘All Human Life Is There’ the News of the World used to emblazon across its masthead. Well, Rupert Murdoch’s editors may have lowered their sights, but not the ITV pantechnicon that is This Morning. There’s more diversity on this show than in the whole of Tower Hamlets. It was like that bar in the original Star Wars movie , full of the bizarrest creatures doing mundane things like gardening hairdressing and chatting about celebs. Talking of which, those singing hairdressers…aaarrrggghh. Words…
�This Morning� this morning. Invited on to �This Morning� with the smart n savvy Lorraine Kelly and Philip Schofield. �All Human Life Is There� the News of the World used to emblazon across its masthead. Well, Rupert Murdoch�s editors may have lowered their sights, but not the ITV pantechnicon that is This Morning. There�s more diversity on this show than in the whole of Tower Hamlets. It was like that bar in the original Star Wars movie , full of the bizarrest creatures doing mundane things like gardening hairdressing and chatting about celebs. Talking of which, those singing hairdressers…aaarrrggghh. Words…
NOT ENOUGH COOKS
A pleasure to meet up with Robin Cook MP, the distinguished member for Livingston, former Foreign Secretary, and notorious racing enthusiast. The occasion was the Oldie Literary lunch in Edinburgh yesterday, which I was hosting on behalf of our clients Swan Hellenic. Other guests included the travel writer Charlie Connelly, author of ‘Attention All Shipping’. All went well. Cook comports himself in a friendly, open manner, but there’s a touch of statesmanlike gravitas present which marks him for the senior figure he now cuts in Labour mythology (notwithstanding that he’s a gift to Jon Culshaw). In the traumatic days when…
PLAY THE GAME, LADS, AND LET’S TALK.
So then, after our completely predictable exit from Euro 2004 during the summer, England’s footballers are now trying to qualify for the World Cup in 2006, and what hard work they’re making of it. They didn’t play too badly against Poland and won the match 2 – 1, but then decided, in an act of childish petulance, that they weren’t going to talk to the spiky media because someone had written some shittythings about them since their epic draw last week against the steely might and legendary footballing skills of…Austria.
Return of the Governor and defence of the soundbite
Go back a few weeks. The polls said the nation suspected the Prime Minister of having deceived its representatives in the House of Commons. The polls said we believed he had deliberately misled us over Iraqi munitions to get some urgency into ‘our’ support for George W. Bush’s Middle Eastern expedition, and get the sacking of Saddam off the starting blocks. At the time the Prime Minister looked tired and gloomy. There was ‘talk’, a lot of it, about whether he’d announce he’d had enough and when he would throw in the towel. Gordon stood on a chair and took…
Borkowski at Guardian seminar on music file-sharing
“The MusicAlly debate: PR and P2P – the perfect anti-piracy pitch” on Monday September 13, 2004 from 6.00pm at the Guardian Newsroom, London, EC1. Sponsored by the Guardian, Guardian Unlimited and the Observer, the panel discussion will hear three top advertising, PR and marketing executives – Tim Duffy, the head of M&C Saatchi, Interbrand boss Jez Frampton and PR man and MediaGuardian.co.uk columnist Mark Borkowski – present their views on how the UK music business can avoid a public relations disaster as it seeks to confront the challenge of unlicensed file sharing. As British labels gear up to consider suing…
Anthea Turner
I feel a touch of tabloid fatigue coming on. The symptoms include sighing deeply and muttering ‘Oh come ON!’ repeatedly. It’s a familiar end-of-silly-season complaint and generally only lasts a morning or two. The Daily Mirror is responsible for my current attack. This paper has a reputation for NOT exactly being a founder-member of the Anthea Turner Fan Club, so the way they spun the not-terribly-interesting story of a peeved charity looking for another patron to help them raise funds (‘DUMPED’) was hardly a surprise. Apparently Mrs Grant Bovey agreed, under who-knows-what subtle emotional pressure, to help a hospice in…
Do journalists necessarily make good PR's?
The Media Column: ‘Journalists are always among those most ready to sneer at PR’ by Bill Hagerty ‘Mark Borkowski, who runs the PR company of the same name and has recently been presenting Son of Barnum, a one-man show on publicity and publicists, is not convinced that good journalists necessarily make good PRs.’ http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/media/story.jsp?story=554501
MARK BORKOWSKI – SON OF BARNUM EDINBURGH – INDEPENDENT REVIEW:
Mark Borkowski: Son of Barnum Assembly Rooms EDINBURGH – INDEPENDENT REVIEW: This canter through the history and application of publicity stunts is more a lecture and slide-show than a one-man show and anyone considering getting up in time to catch Son of Barnum should definitely bring a notebook. From his own career, Borkowski picks out the work he did for two acts that courted fabricated controversy – Archaos and the Jim Rose Circus. There is some classic footage of the former Edinburgh city councillor and self-styled moral guardian, Moira Knox, getting tangled up with Rose, which permits us to see…
Fuming over ban
Fuming over ban THE Fringe�s reputation for cutting-edge performance art is being jeopardised by the council�s “hysterical” attitude to health and safety, it was claimed today. Performer Mark Borkowski launched a scathing attack on city officials after being refused permission to use a chainsaw in his act at the council-owned Assembly Rooms. http://news.scotsman.com/archive.cfm?id=951392004
FCUK, off: fashion label decides to rest 'tired' logo
FCUK, off: fashion label decides to rest ‘tired’ logo Independent – London,England,UK … The publicist Mark Borkowski said the new promotion was a way to refresh the label in the face of competitors who were imitating the original campaign. … http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=551885