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

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

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…

It’s been interesting to be following pre-Christmas sales on the internet for the last three or four days, for two reasons. One reason is personal – my book, The Fame Formula, has leapt up the Amazon sales chart by several thousand places in the last three days. The other reason is that I’ve been watching Rage Against the Machine’s 17 year old track, Killing in the Name Of, consistently outselling the X Factor winner’s song – an instantly forgettable motivational ballad from the Hannah Montana movie – thanks to the Facebook campaign set up by a couple bored with the ubiquity of Simon Cowell’s vision of music.

I have a theory that the two are connected, intellectually at the least. The Fame Formula is, under the surface, an antidote to fame, a prick in the bubble of modern celebrity. I am certain that the same sort of people who are downloading Killing in the Name Of are buying The Fame Formula simply because they are tired of prefabrication and relentless hype on a foundation of sand.

The Fame Formula examines the degredation of fame carefully and uses examples from history to expose the weak foundations that modern celebrity has been built on, where talent has been hoovered out leaving only a husk of toxic fame. The book celebrates the icons of the past who built, with the assistance of canny publicists, a lasting fame propogated by extraordinary talent; it also offers a view on how to achieve that today. It does not say the past is better – the aim of the book is (as it is with the Rage Against the Machine campaign) to offer alternatives for the future, using great moments from the past as a basis, a springboard.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if people wanting to overturn the Cowell vision of pop were buying the book to stock up on ideas. At last there seems to be a consensus of opinion agreeing with George Santayana, who said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” There seems to be a hunger for using the past to positively influence the future, at least in popular culture. If this is the case – and I hope it is – I’d say (with a little bias, admittedly) that The Fame Formula is a good place to start looking for ideas to adapt from.

If Rage Against the Machine’s refrain, “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me”, is the sound of Christmas this year, I hope people take courage from it and use social media and networking in ever more creative cultural (and social and political) interventions in the coming years. And if my book can help it happen, all the better.

Some of the contestants in the X Factor, wanting to learn a thing or two about the publicity tricks of the past to help get them through the tough new auditions system, (where they have to face not only the barbed comments of Simon Cowell and co, but the baying of a full-throttle audience out for carefully-packaged blood) have turned to the Fame Formula for ideas, it seems, as this picture from the ITV website proves.

Look carefully at the hands of the ape on the right...

A hug from Danni and Simon may be all very well, but it seems that The Fame Formula is the hardened fame seeker’s reference book of choice when it comes to helping build the courage to leap onto the first greasy rung of the ladder of stardom. Personally, I can’t help hoping that some more audition hopefuls will, er… ape these guys and go out and buy the book…

The guys from Bragster, the social networking site for daredevils, were the ones dressed in the gorilla suits, braving the raised eyebrows of Cowell and co. The site’s boss Bertrand was dared to take part by his colleagues, with £1000 going to charity on the condition that he get a hug from one of the main judges. Here’s a link to some footage of him in action on the ITV website – I particularly like his version of I Want to Be Like You…

I have just launched Improperganda: The Great Edinburgh Stunt Twithibition, a whole new form of exhibition, especially for the Edinburgh Festival, featuring 11 eye-catching posters commemorating some of the greatest stunts to have graced the streets of Edinburgh and utilizing the conversational, interactive power of the internet

The #Twithibition is a manifold, interactive marvel – the posters can be viewed, assuming they’ve survived weather, vandals and other flyposters, on the streets of Edinburgh in the places where the stunts happened. They can also be viewed on Twitter by searching the site for #twithibition. Most importantly, the exhibition can be added to, commented upon and expanded by anyone adding the hash tag #twithibition to a tweet or twitpic of a stunt they remember or have just perpetrated.

The posters have been designed by David Hillman,one of the iconic figures of British design. The photographs of stunts – and, in a neat post-modern twist, the photographs of the posters – are all by the marvellous photographer Geraint Lewis, who has been covering Edinburgh Festival for years and capture the spirit of the stunts to a tee.

The old guard may mutter about the good old days of the Festival, but every generation does. The fact remains that Edinburgh is the place to create celebrity immortality, to wallow in the mud pits of publicity in the silly season, when every paper and website in the country is eager – if not desperate – for funny, cool or downright weird stories. The #Twithibition is about celebrating the chutzpah and spirit of Festival publicity and about encouraging people to continue in that spirit, adding their own memories and invention to stunts of old.

I can’t wait to see what people come up with. Let the audacity and mayhem begin!

To see the #Twithibition in action, visit Twitter. For more information on the exhibits, click here.

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 a full stop.

Floral tributes for Michael Jackson in LA

The allegations of paedophilia that haunted Jackson’s final years have all but disappeared and now is the time for a show to close that chapter of Jackson’s life – a show to end all shows and to begin new ones. The funeral seems to be gearing up to be a show for people to demonstrate love and adoration for Jackson – but it also seems to be more about the people commemorating Jackson than about Jackson himself. Shaheen Jafargholi, who sang a Jackson song on Britain’s Got Talent, will be there, singing alongside Stevie Wonder, Mariah Carey and more.

Like Princess Diana before, the crowds are gathering to mutually support each other at the Staples Centre and mutually assure that they forget the rough patches in Jackson’s life. But I’m more interested in the people who aren’t going to be there – David Blaine is in this country, Lisa Marie Presley is abroad. How will they be mourning?

The media gearing up for Jackson's funeral

There’s another funeral Jackson’s looks set to resemble – that of Phineas Taylor Barnum. It’s curious, given the freakish nature of much of Jackson’s life in the limelight, that his funeral should resemble that of the man who travelled the world with a freak show. But Barnum was canny enough to know that he was dying and well loved enough to get a copy of his own obituary a day or two before he died. It’s hard to imagine Jackson even countenancing the idea that he might die.

Here’s a report on the funeral of Barnum, written a little after the event over 100 years ago.

“The morning was cold, gray, and dismal. Nature’s heart, with the spring joy put back and deadened, symboled the melancholy that had fallen upon Bridgeport. No town was ever more transformed than was this city by one earthly event. On the public and private buildings were hung the habiliments of woe; flags were at half mast, and, in the store windows were to be seen innumerable portraits and likenesses of the dead citizen, surrounded by dark drapery, or embedded in flowers.

“Nor was this all. The people on the street and in the windows of their houses seemed to be thinking of but one thing–their common loss. The pedestrian walked slower; the voices of talkers, even among the rougher classes, were more subdued, and in their looks was imprinted the unmistakable signal of no common or ordinary bereavement.

“The large church was not only filled, with its lecture-room, a considerable time before the hour set for the services; but thousands of people crowded the sidewalks near-by for hours, knowing they could only see the arrival and departure of the funeral cortege. The private services at the house, “Marina,” near the Seaside Park, which preceded the public services in the church, were simple and were only witnessed and participated in by the relatives and immediate friends.”

More preparations for Jackson's funeral

It will be interesting to see how long the current state of post-Jackson euphoria-in-loss lasts – a lot of smoke went up over the allegations that marred his final years. Will any of it be blown away in the coming months? One thing is certain; if a brand is powerful enough and has enough money behind it, anything unsavoury can be made to disappear, as the fixers at MGM proved in the 1930s.

I’ll close with another quote from the report on Barnum’s death:

“When, in 1889, the veteran brought over his shipload of giants and dwarfs, chariots and waxworks, spangles and circus-riders, to entertain the people of London, one wanted a Carlyle to come forward with a discourse upon ‘the Hero as Showman.’ It was the ne plus ultra of publicity. There was a three-fold show–the things in the stalls and cages, the showman, and the world itself. And of the three perhaps Barnum himself was the most interesting. The chariot races and the monstrosities we can get elsewhere, but the octogenarian showman was unique. His name is a proverb already, and a proverb it will continue.”

Jackson was, without doubt, a huge brand at the heart of a huge, freakish circus and was the most interesting thing in it – as the recent outpourings prove. But will Jackson become a proverb – or just a bogeyman? Only time will tell.

The media post mortem following Michael Jackson’s death, which shows no signs of abating, has unearthed some astounding observations. With the tearful tributes, the questions about cause of death, the demand for a second post mortem, potential custody battles over his children and the absence of any will and testament, I can’t help feeling that the greatest tragedy in this whole sad affair, is the unadulterated exploitation of a man who was clearly disturbed and at the mercy of a number of charlatans.
Of course show business is exactly what it claims to be – business – and it’s always been the same for stars. Very few have had real control, whether you’re talking about Buster Keaton, Judy Garland or Marilyn Monroe. But there’s usually a team of people behind the star who know how to make money and keep the brand going, but with Jackson he seems to have been constantly exploited, either by those in his entourage or by his family.
The word is that the pressure on Jackson to perform fifty dates at the O2 arena contributed to his untimely death. Wouldn’t his fitness to perform have been checked in a medical before the ten dates turned into fifty. Surely the heart would be the major organ to feature in such medicals?
It’s been suggested that the sharp rise in the number of dates was also responsible for Jackson losing his nerve, another issue that needed treatment from his “private” doctor. But why was Jackson playing fifty dates at the O2 when he could have played eleven dates at Wembley Stadium to the same amount of fans. The o2 holds 20,000 and Wembley Stadium holds 90,000. Weighing in at only 8 stone, with a suspected pill habit, why did Jackson’s advisors think it beneficial for him to do fifty dates instead of eleven?
It seems that Wembley has been overtaken as the definitive rock venue by the O2, which is hoovering up all the gigs. But there was a time, a few years back, when you couldn’t pay anyone to set foot in the place; now it’s the mecca for rock music, made cool by the likes of Led Zeppelin and Prince. The turn in fortune for the o2 was partly down to Rob Hallett, the head of the o2’s programming who was purportedly the man behind the increase in the number of Jackson dates. He was backed by Randy Phillips who heads up AEG worldwide- both parties no doubt benefiting extensively from this business deal. The statement released this morning that AEG intends to treat the Jackson fans with as much respect as Jackson himself did is rather jarring considering the statement was accompanied by a calculated publicity stunt.
This must be the biggest single event to be cancelled – ever. The tickets have been sold internationally, via internet sellers, through agents and touts and on ebay, making a vast network of ticket owners. The idea, then, that AEG is offering the fans a choice of a refund for the ticket price or the concert ticket itself as a souvenir, which could be worth something in years to come, is a stroke of (obvious) PR genius.
The cost of a paper ticket will have been a fraction of the price of the ticket value, and a large proportion of those fans will probably opt for the ticket rather than a refund as it will be one of the last items of Jackson memorabilia available to them. Handy really for AEG, as it turns out they are apparently only insured for ten Jackson dates. If, however, they are hoping that people will go for the ticket as a possible investment, the people who booked tickets should be aware that there are 1 million of them and this doesn’t make for much of a limited edition. AEG might have done better to promise some of the money to a Jackson-friendly charity.
Jackson was surrounded on both sides by people draining him – by fans on one side, who drooled over his every word and on the other by people making money out of him who kept him divorced from reality. He always surrounded himself with sharp operators who were top-notch at short-term brand work – but no one who could play the long game, which would explain all the difficulties that dogged throughout his life. I worked with him once, briefly, a long time ago, and his people always had their own agenda. I was unable to work with his entourage as I was just a pawn in a multifaceted chess game. Jackson, however, was just a puppet in the middle.
The same is true in death; the scrum to loot Jackson’s brand is underway and, like the beat, it will probably go on and on. The Jackson brand will never be laid to rest.

Now, people are free to turn Michael Jackson into what they always wanted him to be; the perfect pop prince who will be spotted living on the moon with Elvis one of these days, humming a few bars of Thriller. Death cleanses people like Jackson; all the negative copy has been laid to rest on the man himself. Instead it is being directed at the sharks gathering at his coffin side, the whole dysfunctional family, who have come to loot what they can. AEG are benefiting, albeit inadvertently, from Jackson’s death, but many others are cashing in on the Jackson brand whether it be via merchandising or creating DVDs from Jackson’s upcoming show rehearsal clips. Jackson’s father, however, is using this time to launch a record label as a method of mourning.

Jackson is, simply, worth more dead than alive – his death allows his life to become the Disney fairy tale he always wanted it to be. And, like a Disney fairy tale, all the really strange and unfortunate aspects of Michael Jackson’s life have been excised.

He will be buried at Neverland, the palace he built to try and contain his long-lost youth, after being carried through the streets of LA in a glass coffin placed on a carriage drawn by white horses and followed by a motorcade and doubtless hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people will come to watch. This was the family’s idea of a special send off

Jackson is being Dianified. And on top of that I have it on good authority that there are plans already afoot to create holograms of Jackson that will, effectively, keep him as a ‘living’ presence for evermore. Imagine it – Michael Jackson, permanently fit unless there’s a powercut, playing Vegas forever. It really wouldn’t surprise me if holographic technology were brought forward by decades just to achieve this.