‘THE FAME FORMULA or In Search Of The Sons Of Barnum’

The first uber client Borkowski PR ever had was Archaos, the punk circus which scandalized the UK between 1988 and 1991 with dangerous chainsaw-juggling, a raunchy Gallic attitude and explosive, two-fingers-in-the-face-of Health & Safety performances. The UK circus scene was shaken to its very core and would never be the same again. And I’m proud to have been the impropergandist that crafted their media profile, and equally proud to be celebrating them with an exhibition this September.

The groundbreaking campaign for Archaos we conducted for Archaos was the foundation for the Borkowski ethos. One of the immutable things about the company is our attachment to a good yarn, a great tale, a strange story, a bit of salacious gossip, a secret confidence, an odd anecdote or an outlandish rumour. We work with the stuff of conversation – the sort that fuels all social interactions. Barnum knew it, and he knew how to get conversations going to his commercial advantage. Read the rest of this entry »

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 important PR 2.0 can be – and to stir the hornet’s nest a little.

In the brave new world run to the tune of the ten minute news cycle, where traditional media has been reduced to merely commenting on and affirming stories that are broken on Twitter and in the blogosphere, almost at the speed of thought, and where advertising budgets have been slashed down to the stump, what else is there but PR? Read the rest of this entry »

Season four of Mad Men starts in America tomorrow night, but I managed to get a sneak preview thanks to a friend and, watching it, I realised that most of America just doesn’t know how far back the PR industry’s influence stretches. Of course, if you’ve read my book The Fame Formula, you’d know that the history PR is a far richer seam to mine than that of the history of advertising – but this is largely undiscovered and unrecognised in America.

It’s not the opportunity to win a walk-on part in the series that I’m talking about, either – although that is a fine stunt to grab attention (who wouldn’t want to get dressed up in Madison Avenue finery and appear on screen with the intensely glam Mad Men and Women?). It’s more the homage to the great publicist Jim Moran in the actual episode that piqued my interest.

In the episode, a couple of actors are hired to fight over a ham to garner attention and are then seen being bribed to blow the stunt – it’s a fairly knockabout scene, especially when the cast try to stop the actors blowing the stunt. In real life, Jim Moran staged a row between to New York barkeepers to launch Pimms in America – he had them end up in court, rowing about the perfect ingredients for a Pimms and garnered a great deal of attention for the drink.

If Moran’s elegantly twisted wit and genius is being plundered by Mad Men already, it just goes to prove my point about PR being a richer seam to mine – they’ve run out of real stories from advertising. Is it not time. then, for a truer drama looking at the heart of the American dream? One that looks at the lives of the PR men?

All brands in this new age require a long-term strategic overview of every potential threat. The corporate vicissitudes being thrown up by the 21st century means that communication and PR skills must be, of necessity, embedded in the captains of industry. After all they are the brand custodians. But looking at BP, and Tony Hayward in particular, that lesson has clearly not yet been learned.

Problems can no longer be brushed under the carpet – corporations need to be fearing the worst and preparing to deal with it in public. The brand narrative of the big corporations needs to be played out transparently and in public.

BP in particular has neglected to consider how devastating a corporate crisis – especially one so mismanaged from the top – can be in this age of instant opinion, globalised rolling news, social media and febrile politics. They were still locked into a comms crisis planning scenario built in the 1990s in the wake of the Brent Spar disaster when the spill in the Gulf of Mexico occurred. They had not planned any new PR approaches at all. Read the rest of this entry »

Ever heard of the beer Bavaria? Me neither, until FIFA made sure that absolutely everyone got to hear about it after Bavaria sent a team of pretty young female ambush marketeers to Holland’s opening match of the World Cup using tickets bought in the name of (now ex-) ITV pundit Robbie Earle.

One sacking, several arrests (ambush marketing being illegal in South Africa) and a barrel-full of free publicity for Bavaria later and the only clear winner is the beer company, although the attractive young ladies – already described as ‘blonde bombshells’ in tabloids and blogs – will probably enjoy their day in court. Read the rest of this entry »

A pal sent this snap to Borkowski Towers. I am excited and delighted to have discovered evidence of the person who bought my book – now, I wonder who she is?

I’m taking part in a couple of debates in the next few days. First up is Risky Business: Risk and Reputation, an early morning debate on the nature of risk, this Thursday, February 11th, at the Cass Business School. Given the year just gone and the way the financial crisis has played out, it should be an interesting and possibly heated debate Read the rest of this entry »

I hope you’ll forgive me a brief bask in the news that The Fame Formula has crept back up the Amazon charts and is currently at number 4 in the Film and Performing Arts Bestseller list, as well as moving slowly back into the running in the overall chart.

It certainly seems like the Fame Formula is finding a life of its own again – I’ve recently received a number of emails and tweets from people who like the book. I’m humbled by their praise – and intrigued by one tweet that insists that the book has more to say about the ad industry than most books actually about the ad industry.
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I’ve had a dose of New Year cheer after yesterday’s blog – I’ve just learned that the episode of Eric Schwartzman’s wonderful weekly podcast On the Record, covering all the latest issues in the world of PR, in which I discussed The Fame Formula, is the second most popular download of last year. Most cheering of all, the interview was recorded in August 2008!

If you never heard the podcast, it’s still available by clicking here. It’s also well worth subscribing to the On the Record podcast – there’s always something interesting to listen to…

Joe McElderry has lost out to Rage Against the Machine – it seems that a significant proportion of the British record-buying public really have turned on Simon Cowell and given him a festive slap under the miseltoe.

It’s an upset, but its significance lies in what the power of the Internet might achieve next. Motivational balladry versus an old, shouty agit pop record should cause a few smiles and quite a few more spluttering grannies in front of Top of the Pops on Christmas morning, but it won’t change the world. But the methods to get said agit pop record to number one could just help change the world.

Any number of ad agencies and PR companies say the understand the Internet and all its uses. This is little more than posturing; if we’ve learned anything from the net, it’s to expect the unexpected and that no-one can truly predict what uses people will put it to and what they can achieve if they put their minds to the task in hand.

If the Internet can be harnessed in a similar manner behind a cause like cutting CO2, behind the Climate Conference in Copenhagen or whatever comes next, then there is a chance that real changes can be made in 2010 and beyond without people running up huge carbon footprints going on a protest holiday. Playing with the charts is all very well, but the real business that social networking-savvy people need to address is the process of using this small victory to springboard significant changes on the world and fight the welter of greenwashing, disinformation and distrust.

Perhaps this is all a romantic dream – but if Rage Against the Machine’s trite but pleasing net-powered chart victory can be translated into actual societal change through like-minded people working together in the coming years, then it will have been worth it.

If PR firms, ad agencies and people eager to make a difference don’t get it together and work on making this happen, then the military industrial complexes will – they are, without doubt as I write this, working on ways of utilising the net for their own ends.

Trivial as the chart battle of Christmas 2009 may be, its knock on effect could be real, organised changes made via the power of the Internet. That’s my hope for 2010…