I’ll be examining the manipulative new age of PR and social media, and how the herd is motivated to reshape our lives, in Edinburgh next week. My lecture is one of the key events in the inaugural Edinburgh International Marketing Festival on Tuesday 24th August at 17.30 and the lecture aims to reveal exactly how…
Today’s edition of the Sun features an exposé of Wayne Rooney’s recent night on the tiles as his team-mates “completed rigorous pre-season fitness tours”. It is a typically irked and excitable article, chipping away at the veneer of sporting heroism that has been liberally applied to Rooney and his sporting colleagues in the past. The…
In the 21st Century, with the Twitter cycle outpacing the news cycle by a length, with fewer people working for newspapers and, with Murdoch insisting that content has taken a step up to Emperor, stories move too fast for journalists to stop for anything as paltry and deadbeat as a fact. The truth is dismal,…
There is no hope for the England team – every time one of them opens their mouth they put their foot in it and someone (usually the press) helpfully shoves the boot in too. What do we really expect, though, when the players have too much time, money and self-regard on their hands? Take Ashley…
There’s a deal of speculation about how long Fabio Capello is to stay in the job as England’s manager – a statement was even put out before the decisive group match suggesting that his job was in jeopardy. It seems likely that he will go, and soon, despite a few bullish headlines suggesting that we…
We are living in a karaoke media culture – everything we see is a pale, recycled copy of something that’s gone before and, worse still, this sincere flattery of icons and iconography past is being actively encouraged. Miley Cyrus is heading off down the well-trodden path of over-sexualised image that has been presented 1000 times…
The Borkowski poet in residence, Adam Horovitz, returns with a versicle celebrating the reaction to the England v. Algeria match last night. I’ve been drowning my ennui in tequila, beer and noise, trying to float the bubble football blows and then destroys I’ve been drowning my ennui. I’ve been blotting the despair that’s been welling…
From the archives – an old post from Euro 2004, reflecting on another dismal tournament for the English football team. We heap too much expectation on a bunch of lads who will never be able to exorcise the ghosts of the 1966 World Cup. The hype and the ballyhoo is too heavy a burden for…
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…
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…