Amy Winehouse’s contemporary iconography (part self-created, part media-inflicted) encompassed, all at the same time, a drive toward an idealised image which would grant her immortality in name and a constant reminder of her frailty, her mortality in body.

“The more insecure I get, the bigger my beehive gets,” she was once quoted as saying. Her image, an archetypal representation of Rock ‘n’ Roll and all it encompasses, took her far away from the Amy of whom the papers are constantly reminding us – healthily full-figured, straight haired, blandly smiling. As it did so, it at once elevated her from being simply a talented girl to an icon, destined for some measure of immortality, and reminded us of the physical cost involved in the process: dangerous weight loss and a mournful expression. She was, on one level, a human sacrifice, her progress towards that sacrifice acted out through the medium of publicity.

I spoke yesterday to Tom Payne, the author of the seminal work Fame: from the Bronze Age to Britney which, truth be told, is a book I wish I’d written. Tom is an expert on the history of fame’s toxicity, on which he writes in the book but also in blogs for the Huffington Post and elsewhere, so I thought I’d ask him for his take on the affair.

He immediately brought up the historic link between fame and the inevitability of death. “James Fraser writes that very primitive peoples had no idea that death was inevitable, that they thought each death they witnessed was an unfortunate accident”, he says. “It follows that the realisation of death’s inevitability required some consolation”. He cites the example of Achilles (a kind of proto-James Dean in a skirt and sandals) as someone whose demand from his admirers was linked inextricably with an awareness that he wouldn’t long be around to satisfy that demand.

But this inevitability racket maybe takes away a little too much responsibility from the media and the public that drives it. Leo Braudy argues in his book The Frenzy of Renown (which I used as research tool for The Fame Formula) that, while fame has always existed, the changes in the mechanics of fame have morphed it into something much more dangerous than it once was.

Partly as a result of Reality TV, rolling media and all the other hyperactive platforms of the 21st century, and partly as a result of the general postmodern mindset, we’re increasingly aware of the process by which someone becomes famous. As a result, we’re increasingly conscious of the gap between image and reality, and the tensions therein. It surely follows that we feel increasingly able to take possession of that image and discard any personal effect or accountability. Where an historic figure like Alexander the Great was, in the eyes of his citizens, a seamless combination of brand and reality, a figure like Amy Winehouse was separately a brand and a person.

I’ve constantly stated that the life of the modern day celebrity, thanks to their highly visual ubiquity, is followed by their public as a soap opera narrative which is simultaneously idealised and throwaway. The life of a celebrity is highly stylised in the eyes of a public at once eager to absorb it and conscious of its emptiness, its ephemeral quality.

A series of clichéd motifs – the now de rigeur flower shrines which began at Diana’s funeral, for instance – colour and define these stories. These are reinforced on a practical level by the media looking for established means of obtaining their perfect photo op, but also on a different level by an audience seeking the familiarity of the stock images by which they define the celebrity narrative.

The notion of the ’27 club’ is a good example. What began as a shortcut to a catchy headline after the death of Jim Morrison has become a full-blown myth. The public have written it into their sought-after fiction. If there is an inevitability about the tragedy of fame, it is audience-created: the modern day famous person finds themselves publicly warped by a narrative set in stone before they were born. For the less robust mind, this is a recipe for disaster.

Though it comes from a somewhat biased position, there might be something to the Gaga comment. Fame and image has the potential to nurture the artist if it is carefully integrated with her personal reality. It is when we subscribe wholly to the artist’s brand as a concept and a narrative that we sign up to the shameful inevitability of death in art. We didn’t ‘kill the superstar’, but the way we thought of her also meant we weren’t really in a rush to help her out.

Read my book and understand that the causalities of fame are littered across the history of the genre. And be prepaed: until we help and support those snared in the trap that is modern fame, we can expect more victims.

“The head honchos of News Corp looked somewhat ill-prepared, and with Rupert Murdoch struggling to answer some of the questions put to him, one began to feel sympathy for the octogenarian. Thoughts that this was a deliberate tactic seem ludicrous. I am not sure any crisis specialist would have suggested Rupert should play the befuddled role.

“Rupert became stronger as the hearing reached its end, but the story that keeps on giving provided a comic moment as a protestor was beaten back by his stoic wife Wendy. This played into the Murdochs’ hands because it disrupted the final flow of questioning by MPs.

“Judging by their performances before the committee, it was interesting to see that perhaps James is too young to be the new man at the helm of News Corp and certainly Rupert felt too old. Overall, for a situation that could have been a real negative for the Murdochs, it came out neutral. We are not talking about it being a PR disaster or a PR success.”

Way back in 2003 I scribbled a note about another great virtuoso; one who is very much alive. He is Derren Brown. Derren Brown mesmerises me. On the occasions I have been lucky enough to see him perform live, I have marvelled at his persuasive power. I felt his showmanship was so important, I defended it after it attracted negative press when he staged a controversial Russian Roulette stunt on Channel 4. The media called foul, but I believed it was a masterstroke that confirmed his showmanship and considerable talent.

Last night I witnessed yet again another brilliant Derren Brown performance. Every PR pixie should buy a ticket to bear witness to the real art of crowd manipulation. The new show, Svengali, is a wonder. It celebrates 10 years of his craft. In the programme he declares the first rule of modern PR; a declaration of brand transparency. “I am often dishonest in my techniques,” he writes, “but I am always honest about my dishonesty.”

So much is written and discussed about the PR game of communication. It’s never been under so much scrutiny and we all know it’s passing through various stages of change. We pitch ideas and try to impress. Watching Derren, I saw a talent at the height of his powers. The audience last night were in the palm of his hand.

I am not going to offer spoilers and write a review of all of the show’s fascinating elements, but it is worth noting the depth of his planning. The way he maintains a sense of wonder is a thing of awe in itself. If he was an unknown and chose to parlay his skills into the dark arts of marketing, goodness knows the outcome. I suspect that we would all believe turkey twizzlers were nutritious if he put his hand to marketing them.

Derren understands the minutiae of human behaviour. He’s driven by his place in entertainment history and he has a clear understanding of the past. Much of the show genuflects to the past masters. He is modernising the art of illusion and bringing it into the modern day. Be aware and make a note: the tricks and skills of the great PR practitioners have not changed. It’s exciting for those with a respect for the past; the same techniques that have enthralled retain the same power to engage.

We allow ourselves to become fixated by process, and are shortsighted about our own sense of persuasion. Kill to buy a seat to watch Derren and see how he persuades a crowd. He’s done his time recognising the intricate mechanism of the human psyche.

Josef Goebbels was perhaps the most notorious exponent of propaganda and PR. Goebbels understood the human too. He was very clear about how he went about his dismal craft. Speaking in March 1933, immediately after his appointment as Minister for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda in Hitler’s first government (a role in which he was to do more than most to ensure the evil progress of the Nazis) he said: “If you examine propaganda’s most secret causes, you will come to different conclusions: then there will be no more doubting that the propagandist must be the man with the greatest knowledge of souls. I cannot convince a single person of the necessity of something unless I get to know the soul of that person, unless I understand how to pluck the string in the harp of his soul that must be made to sound.”

To my fellow PRs: listen up! Understand the human, entertain and enrich and capture the imagination on behalf of brands. Build a unique campaign! Greatness is in your grasp. Perhaps the easiest way to start is to watch Derren Brown work his audience and see how he does it. But be quick; tickets are going fast and it’s better to learn from Derren than Goebbels.

And no, I am not doing publicity for his show…

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.

We started out as theatre publicists who sought to follow in Barnum’s footsteps: getting bums on seats by getting people talking about stuff we got in the press. There wasn’t any money to mount costly media occasions or events, so we used guile and whatever creative means we could think of. We were relentless and ruthless in our pursuit of column inches. We ducked and weaved, thought fast and improvised.

We used stunts, hype, scams, and bizarre photo opportunities on the streets and we researched, promoted and invented every possible story angle in the search for ones that would secure coverage in every possible kind of media outlet. We didn’t restrict ourselves to targeting the obvious publications and programmes. We saw our job as spreading the word, wherever and whenever we could. We didn’t doubt that PR was a serious business but, at the same time, it had to be serious fun if it was to work.

The stunts were gripping, and they were absolutely expressive of the celebratory, life-affirming, invigorating and exciting spirit of the shows. People heard about what was happening on the streets, because we made sure – through gossip, whispered hints, press releases, questions in the house and whatever else it might take – that the media were on hand to witness it all. What was witnessed was published (how could they resist?) and anyone who had the slightest admiration for the edgy and the anarchic wanted to see these freaks in the flesh, and so they rolled up and Archaos played to packed houses wherever the production went.

And that is the cavalier, buccaneering spirit upon which Borkowski was founded. It may have moderated over the years, as we shifted into consumer PR, but it’s a spirit that still sits right at the heart of the agency. I find it hard to believe that 20 years have passed since the spectacular end of Archaos, but nonetheless, a group of us have combined forces to celebrate their legend with an exhibition celebrating their brief and wondrous life, which will be taking place at the Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf as part of the Thames Festival programme from Thursday 9th and Sunday 12th September.

As part of the exhibition, I will be revealing – for the first time in over 20 years – some of the deepest, darkest secrets behind the “mad, bad and dangerous to know” Archaos images as well as the dark arts I employed to help make them one of the most infamous circus troupes of all time. Understand what we did with Archaos and why, and you will understand much about the nature of Borkowski PR.

My talk takes place at 4 p.m. on Saturday, 11th September. The exhibtion is open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on the 9th and 10th and 11 a.m. to 8.30 p.m. at the weekend. Entry is free. Hope to see you there!

Here’s a link to an article in the Independent on the exhibition.

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?

I’ll be discussing Captivating Narrative and how compelling and effective stories can be utilised to unite social media, traditional media and word of mouth into one powerful, viral jet-stream of information to promote brands, stars or anything one wants to apply them to and how truth plays second fiddle to manufactured fiction.

Captivating Narrative is the next step up from the public conversation that brands must maintain in the internet age if they are to survive. Brands and stars live or die on the way they are perceived and if they can control their own narrative and make it fascinating, they are far more likely to survive. A compelling story draws people in and spreads more easily by word of mouth. They can apply to anything!

I’ll be dissecting the image and reputation of some of the biggest brands and names going, as well as looking at the people who manipulate them. The show examines brands and personalities as diverse as Toyota, Al Qaeda, Paris Hilton, Somali Pirates, the England football team, Tony Hayward Joseph Goebbels and Asda.

To book tickets, click here.

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?

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.

BP and public relations have had an uneasy relationship over the last 100 years; they have fallen out in public with everyone from revolutionary nationalist leaders in the Middle East to the United States. But the new age demands a front and centre spokesmen who can make the audience feel like he is listening and actually gives a damn.

But Tony Hayward, facing the Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on “The Role of BP in the Deepwater Horizon Explosion and Oil Spill”, doesn’t seem to have learned a great deal about being inclusive, about engaging with the public and the politicians. Accused of stonewalling, he stonewalled. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, answer most of the questions he was presented with. In fact, he looked like a tired undertaker who was rather bored with having to look mournful.

Given that a woman held up proceedings earlier in the hearing shouting protests at Hayward, it would have been advisable to show some regret rather than say he felt “a great deal” of responsibility for the oil spill and that it was “a tragedy” with all the emphasis and enthusiasm of an autistic sloth.

It’s impossible to make a hearse driver an F1 champ and so it is with Tony Hayward. The man has the communication skills of a tax inspector; dry and arrogant. It’s incredible that one of the most important corporate jobs in the world has been entrusted to him. This crisis, combined with the corporate downturn, is a game changer. Nothing will be the same in the wake of Hayward’s responses to the Energy Committee.

Other companies who sail close to the edge must be thinking hard about the sort of CEO they get for the new globalised media world. They cannot get anyone as callow and frail as Hayward – one disaster and they could fall apart.

Hayward has reportedly been undergoing training in front of a “murder board” of legal experts to groom him for the aggressive questioning he might face from the Congressional Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee in Washington, but he could not hide his terror. If this is how he copes, even with the best training money can buy.

Tony Hayward says the wrong thing at the wrong time, has turned his back on the green energy revolution, is universally loathed and is clearly utterly afraid. On this evidence, he is just not fit for purpose. He is surely not long for the CEO’s job.

An edited version of this blog appeared in today’s Telegraph.

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.

Anyone wanting to manage a crisis should never have let this get to court, of course. The great American publicist Jim Moran, who I wrote about in The Fame Formula, always wanted to get his stunts to court so as to achieve maximum notoriety and ability to push out sound bites on behalf of his clients. This is the man who said “It’s a sad day for American democracy if a man can’t fly a midget on a kite over Central Park” after the police stopped him from executing that stunt in the 1940s.

The biggest loser in all this is, of course, Robbie Earle, who has hired Phil Hall to help massage any potential long-term career damage and who should take more care about where his largesse is actually going in future. I doubt he actually knew that the tickets he passed on were going to a guerilla marketing company but regardless.

But I can’t imagine that the sponsors will be too happy that FIFA, instead of starving the incident of oxygen actually fanned the flames of publicity by letting it get to court. A big company’s sponsorship is dependent on exclusivity – but enforcing the law rigorously with a group of attractive women is always going to attract further, and unwanted, interest.

TV learned the lesson with streakers – ignore them and the tendency to seek publicity by stripping withers and dies. Had FIFA done this, and had ITV waited a while before ousting Earle, we would likely not have heard of Bavaria beer except as a passing reference, an arcane trivia quiz question in years to come. But thanks to the manhandling of the situation, the midgets are flying over New York for all to see. Jim Moran would have been delighted.

Next up after that is a debate at the University of Westminster on Monday, February 15th on Celebrity Brands: Desire, Dollars and Danger? It’s an equally topical debate, asking if we are near the limit of public interest in celebrities, or if there is no limit, whether celebrities mirror or lead society and if they need or deserve greater protection from the media. Bearing in mind the Tiger Woods case and the more recent John Terry meltdown, we’ll also be discussing what the risks and benefits for brands of associating with celebrities are.

Chewing over the issue with me are Max Clifford, Julian Linley (ex-Heat editor and now creative director of Bauer Media), and the advertising guru Trevor Beattie. The debate will be chaired by Trevor Morris, Visiting Professor of Public Relations at the University of Westminster, and the co-author of ‘PR- A Persuasive Industry?’ It should be a fascinating evening.