Posts Tagged ‘borkowski’

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?

Have you overdosed on the X Factor? Are the opinions of the judges getting you down? Have you felt like venting your feelings about the loss of your favourite contestant? Did Danyl’s departure in the semi-finals really get your goat? Did Lucie losing out to Jedward rile you to the point of despair? Or are you simply sick of the whole ‘poptastic’ shebang?

If the answer to any of these questions is “YES”, Borkowski has a couple of tasty slices of satirical goodness to ease your rage, two fine diversions from a toxic weekend of TV carnage. In a burst of pre-Christmas generosity, we present The Exterminating Factor, a neat-but-twisted X rated game that allows the player an opportunity to vent their destructive feelings. All within the bounds of legality and common sense, of course – we are in no way suggesting that the game’s scenario should be re-enacted in real life.

You see, this twisted little game allows the player to shoot virtual nails into the disembodied heads of Simon Cowell, Danni Minogue, Cheryl Cole and Louis Walsh – and what would there be on TV worth being ranted and fulminated about if The Exterminator Factor were taken too seriously and acted upon in real life?

Better just to play the game and feel that shiver of nervous satisfaction as the first virtual nail strikes and two smaller judges’ heads burst from Simon Cowell’s smiling face. Or gasp as the dimpled smile of a tiny Cheryl Cole disappears forever in a hail of virtual nails.

Based on the gaming classic Asteroids, The Exterminating Factor is the perfect way of letting loose all your pent up frustrations at the 21st Century’s premier talent contest cum soap opera. Click on the picture to access the game.

And as if that wasn’t enough, Borkowski also presents a sharp, satirical poem for all the pacifists and non-gamers out there who are tired of celebrity for the sake of celebrity; of popularity contests masquerading as talent contests; who cannot bear to see the world and its wife doing everything in its power to be famous.

The Sleb’s Prayer, by the remarkable poet Adam Horovitz, features music based on a sample by great 60s garage rock band, The Groupies. The track has been wrapped up in Mel Rodiq’s stunning video in the style of magazines like Heat and OK. You can see it below.

You couldn’t move anywhere this morning without hearing something about Ben Southall, the British winner of ‘The Best Job in the World’ and the string of idyllic desert islands along the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland, Australia, which will act as his home and office for six months. Not surprising, when the job is more like a paid holiday and earns him approximately £74,000!

The campaign, run by Tourism Queensland, is a fine example of PR left to do what it does best – spread a positive story as far and wide as possible in a glowing light. And you don’t get a much more glowing, positive light than in Australia, thanks to the ‘can do’ attitude of the Australians and the sunshine. The story behind this job spread virally throughout the world with a little careful placing on YouTube and Facebook – ‘The Best Job in the World’ was a fantastic hook to take advantage of social networking with.

“This is probably the first time that a campaign has achieved this sort of reach with so little advertising spend other than a few strategically placed job ads around the world,” Australian marketing analyst Tim Burrowes told the Daily Mail. “This has all been about the power of people passing things on, largely through YouTube. The main lesson to be learned here is that if you have an original, exciting idea that gets people talking you don’t need to spend huge on advertising.”

He’s absolutely right, but there are still too many people with great talent of great products out there stuck in relationships with advertising men who just don’t get this or who think that PR is ‘easy’. These are people who will hang on to a client by hook or by crook, telling them what they want to hear and not letting the story out to run free.

It’s amazing what free-thinking PR can do: Borkowski’s award-winning campaign for Wispa won Cadburys huge, nationwide coverage for the return of the iconic 80s chocolate bar and created a conversation with the people who actually bought the bars and wanted it to come back. Through social networking, they were able to be a part of the process. The same is true of the ‘Best Job in the World’ campaign – it spread virally because people felt they were part of it.

The final 50 candidates even competed to gather more followers on the web and interact with them, dressing in Scuba outfits and filming themselves walking through cities being one of the popular stunts. It’s appropriate, given that part of the job remit is to communicate with the world from the island. This, then, is a PR campaign that will just keep on unfolding.

If the ‘Best Job in the World’ campaign had stayed in the hands of advertisers who felt they could manage a little easy PR on the side, however, the story would have been far less likely to have the enormous impact it has had in a little over four months. PR needs to be let free to do what it needs to do – if the ‘Best Job in the World’ story had stayed in the hands of Machiavellian advertising men who are most skilled at managing a client’s expectations and keeping the client in a hole, who claim knowledge of PR when the client knows nothing of it, then it would have faltered at the first.

The campaign could also have easily faltered under the weight of stories about the other islands near to Hamilton Island, where Southall will be taking up residence as caretaker for six months. On the Today programme this morning, Chloe Hooper revealed the darker side of Australia’s relationship with the islands; she talked about Palm Island, founded in 1918 as a prison island for ‘misbehaving’ indigenous Australians – misbehaving meaning speaking their own language or asking about wages.

This is not an island the tourist industry would want known about, especially as indigenous Australians are still beaten and murdered there – Hooper related an incident from 2004 a drunken indigenous Australian swore at the white officer in charge of Palm Island and was found beaten with his liver cut in two some hours later – and the life expectancy is 20 years less for the indigenous population than it is for a non-indigenous Australian.

This story could well explode in the tourist commission’s faces – there is a curious dichotomy between the ‘can do’ attitude of the Australians and the institutionalised racism that survives in the country still. But, by allowing the positive story free reign, they have kept the negative angle at bay for now.

If they can use the waves of unleashed positivity to help address this negative aspect of the Australian psyche – and break down the barriers contained by the barrier reef – all the better, but it’s worth realising that, in the hands of an advertising agency which thinks it understands PR, there would never have been the vast positives in the first place, nor the room to address the darker side of Australia and its relationship with the indigenous population in a constructive, transparent manner.

I will be going head to head with Max Clifford to discuss the toxic nature of celebrity at the London College of Communication tonight and, if you don’t have a ticket – they sold out quickly – you’ll be glad to know you haven’t missed out! You can get involved in the heated and controversial debate as it will be streamed live on Ustream.

If you want to see the debate, click on the following link this evening – the show starts at 6 p.m.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/Borkowski-Talks

And now for some fantastic news! Borkowski will – from April 1st – be bringing the ideas and execution consultancy Beatwax into the Borkowski fold, completing our expansion plans and allowing us to further develop complementary creative solutions for our clients.

I’ve admired the work of Beatwax for a long time – their stunt to promote The Simpsons Movie, placing a huge Homer Simpson next to the Cerne Abbas Giant made it into my book, The Fame Formula, as an example of the sort of stunt that continues the work of the great publicists. Their recent, stunning campaign for Paramount, promoting the Watchmen with a giant water screen projection of the central character, Dr Manhattan, rising out of the Thames, garnered worldwide press attention.

This, then, is an extraordinary opportunity. Beatwax share our values and we are very excited about taking advantage of the obvious creative synergy between the two companies. This will strengthen our ability to do measurable groundbreaking work and deliver what clients need now and into the future.

What’s exciting me most, given the current fragmentation of the media and the rise of social networks, is that this means that Borkowski can take advantage of its ever-evolving strategy to use complementary disciplines to amplify brand campaigns.

Both agencies believe this is important and will help capture the imagination of the public in a technology-driven world of consumer empowerment, bringing new opportunities in creative brand amplification via bespoke communications solutions, encompassing experiential, online, events, guerrilla and street activity, brand and media partnerships and third party promotions.

I can’t wait to see what happens next.

Three out-of-work, recession-hit Santas were employed by Borkowski for a simple photo shoot for the company’s Christmas card, due to take place this afternoon. Unfortunately, they got thoroughly drunk beforehand and are currently rampaging around the streets of London.

Fortunately, we had a video camera on hand and have been following them as they shout, curse and conga their way through the centre of London, accosting passers by, gibbering, wailing and generally misbehaving. The sight of a pissed up, pissed off Santa sat on his haunches in the middle of London nursing a cigarette like his life depended upon it whilst being barracked by his two Santa buddies until he gets up to dance the conga is one to behold.

This may have started off as a simple Christmas card, but I think we’ve got something better still. And, thanks to the wonders of the internet, you can watch them running amok right now at www.borkowski.co.uk/tv

Luckily, someone at the PR Week Awards was on hand with a camera to capture the Borkowski team’s exuberant stage invasion post the announcement of the team winning the Campaign of the Year Gold Award for the Cadbury’s Wispa campaign. The footage below proves beyond doubt that the only thing to go quietly to the stage was the Wispa itself.

In the grainy film, one can see a clearly over-the-moon Larry Franks, Borkowski’s MD, arriving onstage and skidding to his knees at the feet of Bill Bailey, who gives him a hug, before he leaps up to clutch the award in the manner of an England footballer who’s just scored a double hat-trick in the World Cup Final.

He’s followed by the entire Borkowski team, pleased as punch and just as giddy in their glad rags, smiling fit to split their faces as the award statue flies over their heads, gathering into the sort of group shot that is usually used to sell ensemble TV shows about hip and edgy people doing hip and edgy things in hip and edgy places. Not too far removed from the truth, then…

It’s a shame that the footage ends where it does – but one can always fill in the details of what followed for oneself. I’m currently imagining the entire team taking turns to make their version of the Gwyneth Paltrow Oscar acceptance speech, hot tears of joy soaking the award as they cradle it like a newborn baby. It makes for a most charming scene!

The last time we entered the PR Week Awards was fifteen years ago. Then, we won the award for Best Promotional Activity for a publicity stunt that involved a circus and a clown. It was a well-earned award, beating Freud’s Planet Hollywood campaign.

For many reasons, however, we have not entered since then. This year, however, our new business director, Suresh Raj, thought it would be a good idea to put forward our Wispa campaign for Best Digital Innovation. So the team –and assorted clients– turned up to the Grosvenor House Hotel last night to eat rubbery lamb and sip mediocre red wine and quaff catering champagne, not expecting to win the award.

The evening was chaotic. I met loads of old pals and was pleased to see Nick Band, as I mistakenly thought he had died a couple of years ago. The Awards floorshow came from Bill Bailey, who was extraordinarily good. His best line was: “I don’t trust joggers, they’re the ones who always find the dead bodies”.  I think he was warned at least twice not to take the piss out of the PR trade via hastily scribbled note-lets.

I have a huge amount of respect for Colin Byrne but, if I am completely honest, I wasn’t too enthused when the Product and Promotion Marketing and Communications Award went to Weber Sandwich for a patio heater campaign, on behalf of the Energy Saving Trust, beating what was without a doubt one of the best campaigns of last year; the Homer Simpson effigy next to the Cerne Abbas chalk giant staged by Beatwax.

I was blown away, however, when we were given the Digital Innovation award for our Wispa campaign. Danny Rogers, the editor of PR Week, noted that the Cadbury’s Wispa campaign stood out because it expertly harnessed social media to great sales effect.

I had to scoot off early, content that we had achieved something significant. To my amazement, twenty minutes later I received a call from Suresh saying we’d been awarded the Gold Award for Campaign of the Year for our Bring Back Wispa campaign. I was gob-smacked and delighted.

I suppose, if we’d lost, that I might be bleating about how unfair and biased the awards were, but clearly they’re not! It was fantastic to hear that some of the Borkowski team disgraced themselves on stage and that our MD had a Jimmy Bullard moment, skidding across the stage on his hands and knees to take the award from Bill. One sobering thought was that I had to pick up an extraordinary bar bill, which underlined the drunken celebrations that went on until the early hours.

That said, I am blessed with some extraordinary people who work tirelessly to forge campaigns. It’s wonderful to have that recognized by the industry.

As I mentioned yesterday, there’s a star name being attached to a possible Maynard Nottage biopic – and that name has been revealed in today’s Daily Mail, in Richard Kay’s column.

He says: “Uber PR Mark Borkowski’s rediscovery of Twenties Hollywood publicist Maynard Nottage has caught the eye of actor Dustin Hoffman, who wants to play the notoriously hard-drinking womaniser on screen.

“For his best-selling book The Fame Formula, Borkowski researched the life of Nottage, the Forrest Gump of his era whose talents stretched from touring with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show to indirectly helping the Nazis adopt black shirts and the swastika.

“Nottage, who died in 1965 as an outcast from the big Hollywood studios, had been largely forgotten when his granddaughter gave his collected papers to Borkowski.”

To read more, click here and scroll down the page.

Thrills, spills, reviews, readings and parties: it’s been 60 days since The Fame Formula came out and it’s been a rollercoaster ride. And, with Festival season upon us, there’s much more to come.

In the brief pause as the rollercoaster climbs up another slope, before I rush on down into the Festival season, it’s time to reflect on what’s happen and bask in the memories in the last heat of the Indian Summer.

It seems much longer than 60 days since the book hit the shelves in a flurry of press and radio, from local radio to the Jonathan Ross show on Radio 2, the Daily Star to the Guardian, interviews on Channel 4 news and American radio. The formula itself attracted a great deal of attention in the early part of August – I was up to my ears in requests for interviews and welcomed the respite of the launch party at the Riverside Studios, introduced by the late, great Ken Campbell. I was even called “the Obi-Wan Kenobi of PR” on the Asian Network – a most flattering description!

For that event, the splendid Shira McLeod, from the Riverside studios, tracked down the only UK print of The Half Naked Truth, a 1932 film based on the autobiography of Harry Reichenbach, who features heavily in the first part of the book. It was an excellent party and the film, despite being rather dated, went down very well.

After the first flush of publicity came the reviews, many of which were positive – Colin Byrne in The Guardian said that “The Fame Formula is a terrific, witty romp through the – often dirty – undies of the Hollywood fame factory…” for example – although one or two reviewers seemed to decide that the history of PR was not a fit subject for discussion. For the least constructive and most unpleasant of these reviews, I decided to reintroduce Jim Moran’s Asshole of the Year awards – a carefully presented, shrink-wrapped pig’s anus sent in a nice little box.

The reviews kept coming, creeping out in the broadsheets over the space of a month, in the Telegraph, The Daily and Sunday Mail, The Sunday Times, The News of the World, The Evening Standard and many more. And reviews are still appearing on the net.

Then came the launch parties. Alice Beer got herself into the press at the London party, held at Partridges, for sticking sold signs on the displays and a great time was had by all. The Gloucestershire launch, at the Lower Mills Estate, was equally successful, despite the untimely death of Ken Campbell, who was due to perform. A troupe of his associates came and took up his baton, improvising on themes from the book.

There have been some good readings and discussions as part of the launch too – an excellent night at The Space in Brighton, a small but committed audience at the Stroud Valleys Artspace in my hometown of Stroud, Gloucestershire, an event at the Edinburgh Festival and much more – all the details of past and forthcoming events can be found on Facebook or MySpace or at the official website.

There are more performances coming – first at the Raindance Festival in London, talking about the movie fame game with Peter Dunne, former Head of International Publicity at DreamWorks. For more information and to buy tickets, click here.

This is followed by a reading from the book and audience discussion at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature on October 11th – click here for more information.

Finally, here’s a video of Alan Carr and me ranting about the book…