A perfect close to the day, before zooming off to the Cube Store in Brick Lane; Tony Kaye gives a Cube-top show atop a Nissan Cube outside the Tate. Cue startled passers-by, unfazed cabbies, bewildered Big Issue sellers and a few arched eyebrows. In the Nissan Cube, an interesting conversation ensues about how to walk…
About a month ago, I wrote a blog on brand immortality and the way that people are exploiting dead celebrities to generate vast amounts of money in the wake of Michael Jackson’s death. Now, as the world gears up for This Is It, a film of Jackson rehearsals, CNN have come out with a report…
Celebrity death is best done young, or youngish, whilst all the characteristics that enamour the public to them remain intact. It’s not great for the celebrity in question, perhaps, but certain brand-builders love a good image that’s been soused in aspic and preserved for an eternity of milking. Take Michael Jackson, whose death has seen…
And so Michael Jackson is to be put to rest – or his physical form is at least. There is no doubt that his name, his brand and his image will live on for as long as it makes money. Death is merely a chapter break in the life of Michael Jackson – it’s not…
I have asked my old mate Roger Edwards, who used to be marketing director of Wembley Stadium, to provide me with his own reminiscences on the Michael Jackson circus from the time he worked at Wembley. It is still surprising to consider that fifty nights at the O2 would have translated as five nights at…
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…
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…
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…
Where have all the rebellious heroes of British music gone? If the Brit Awards are anything to go by, there is pretty much no such animal anymore, just a parade of no-marks who are too wary of upsetting Mastercard, the sponsors, and the TV executives to do anything interesting. The fact that the inoffensive Welsh…
PR guru Mark Borkowski on the spin battle away from the courtroom For a while there it was touch and go in the Michael Jackson trial. It should have been clearer cut than that, really. After all it was a celebrity’s word against a member of the public. And in America there’s usually only one…