Once upon a time, Jeremy Paxton, owner of our client the Lower Mill Estate, received an earnest letter from the son of a prospective buyer. The letter, sent by six year old Leo Park, enquired politely as to whether the new house being designed for he and his mother, Jade, would have a chimney large enough to accommodate the weighty personage of a certain Santa Claus come holiday season. We persuaded Lower Mill that, as a self build service, it was their duty to fulfil his request.

What’s more, all parties involved agreed to appear before the media to bring this heart-warming Christmas tale to the eyes of the world. We helped Lower Mill and the media to capture the moment at which the chimney was taken for a test run, with a cheery Santa lowered into the chimney via a crane.  Lower Mill were prepared to go that extra mile to sell the house and raise a few smiles. As the old saying goes, you get the publicity you deserve.

From the Daily Mail and the Telegraph to Emirates 247, from CBC America to the Times of India via Radio 2, The One Show and plenty more along the way, the happening captured the imagination of reporters and audiences alike.

A dream story, but one which was an absolute nightmare to organise. Rarely have I appreciated to such an extent the value of a good client: Lower Mill uncomplainingly took on the herculean task of keeping Health and Safety happy.

Time is money, yet the estate’s building company were forced to cease activity for the day as their staff could not be allowed to work around such maverick goings on. Jeremy Paxton had to personally assume the title of health and safety executive for the day to keep the insurers happy, a role which involved him personally going down the chimney before Santa. Finding a crane company willing to lift humans was an odyssey in and of itself: turns out there’s only one in England, and they don’t operate without a fully qualified driver and banksman onsite at all times.

The struggle of operating PR within the new economy is mammoth both for agencies and for clients. In simpler times, I took an elephant for a walk, had motorbikes driven through traffic, dangled circus performers by their hair, wrapped houses and helicopters, staged custard pie fights and swordfighting workshops, built chocolate billboards and had a full-blown party in a fish and chip shop. For all of them I had the full support of the client- always a necessity- and yet rarely were we asked to justify ourselves as much as we were this month, dropping one Santa into his most natural of habitats.

Social media and all the other new age publicity concepts have a huge role to play, but you still haven’t achieved real traction until you’ve brought something into the physical world, an increasingly fraught process. When I’m called upon to judge the PRWeek awards and other industry gongs, I always take the time to think about the sheer effort, belief and trust that’s gone into making remarkable things come about.

As the great Jim Moran once said, “It’s a sad day for American capitalism when a man can’t fly a midget on a kite over Central Park.”. The health and safety anoraks are closing, but they haven’t won yet. With the right client and a lot of chutzpah, you can still do incredible things. Just be prepared for the hard work, the stress and the heady joy if it succeeds.

This has, without doubt, been an extraordinary, tumultuous year, a year in which the cliché of the water cooler moment has been reinvented time and time again by a clamouring horde of news stories, each more consuming and captivating than the last.

In the same way a river builds up to a roaring rush of water from numerous tributaries, so the news agenda has fed itself throughout the year; each story feeds from a different spring but accumulates and becomes an narrative waterfall of Niagran magnitude. And we are all well and truly captivated by this narrative slew of information.

The year has been deafening, powered by a ravenous media and aggregated by social engagement. From World Cup failings to Royal wedding hype, freed hot Chile men to the cunning stunts of ex-Prime Ministers with books to sell, coalition politics to the relentless iPatter of tiny feet that marks the latest Apple revolution, 2010 is surely a year few will forget. Bearing in mind how rapidly things have changed, turned about and in some cases simply stood perceived views on their heads.

Here, then, are some of the key events of the year, filtered through the cautious eye of PR. It is frightening to think what lies ahead for 2011, but if the changes can be more radical yet less of a headlong plunge next year, we could be in for exciting times. See you this time next year to find out! And please be careful in the snow…

The Blogs of the Year (in no particular order)

1) A Royal Announcement
2) Student Protests
3) Wayne Rooney and the Tale of the Greedy Footballer
4) The Chilean Miners
5) Papal PR
6) The Charitable Blair
7) The Fading of Hollywood’s Stars
8) News as Soap Opera
9) The BP PR Disaster
10) The Ghost of Advertising Future
11) Coalition Politics
12) iPR
13) Tiger Comes Out of the Woods
14) PR Spam

It really is fabulous news, in such tough economic times, that the cuts will not affect everything. In 2011 there will be something for the whole nation to celebrate, especially the merchandise sellers, caterers and makers of bunting. It’s really an early Christmas present for them all.

And better still, it’ll take place 30 years after Charles and Diana’s wedding. We will have a new Princess of Hearts – and the same sort of economic straits then as now. Perhaps we’ll get anniversary riots in Brixton and Toxteth too, only to have the wedding calm them down.

And if this exceptional and fabulous stunt doesn’t calm the angrily beating heart of Britain, then there will be a second pageant the following year when the Olympics comes to town. All this should make up for the fact that we probably won’t get the World Cup, shouldn’t it?

And if this pump priming of the economy still doesn’t work, we could always celebrate another anniversary in the Falklands in 2013, couldn’t we? There’s nothing quite like a war for stimulating economic revival, after all!

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Cynicism aside, it’ll be interesting to see how the royal couple cope. It is to be hoped that the couple – and the a Royal PR – have learned lessons from Princess Diana’s trials and tribulations, but the media has changed beyond recognition in the past thirty years. How will Kate Middleton learn to cope with the pressure?

As I noted yesterday, the Palace used to shut its doors at 5pm daily. Now it is proactive and on call to respond to anything, anytime. The couple need to be well prepared for the onslaught of interest a Royal wedding inevitably brings, what with the digital explosion and easy, instantaneous access to information. I expect they will be being drilled in the ways of dealing with the media over the coming months.

They’ve got to be perfect if they’re going to act as a fillip for the economy, after all.

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This is a one fact story – “they’re getting married” sums it up – and yet, as the day goes on, it is elongating out of all control. It’s all over the news channels and I can’t help but suspect that all sorts of brands and celebrities will be getting in on the act, hoping a little of the stardust will rub off on them. After all, David Cameron is already proudly announcing that he slept on the Mall aged 15 for the 1981 wedding…

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…

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.

It may not be a wholly original stunt, but it is a clever and effective one for the internet age – it allows the Finnish company to get search engine optimisation in the run up to the festive season and keeps the newly unpronouncable man from Wisconsin in ready cash for a while. I think it’s a tremendous PR scam designed to get the public conversation going about the company in time for Christmas.

Here’s the MP3 version, if you’d like to hear more.

I’ll be back before the year is out with a list of the best and the worst of PR in 2008, but in the meantime, I’d like to leave this sublime piece of advertising with you. When you click on the link below, take time to go through all the options. Relish every detail. Whoever concocted the campaign deserves to be congratulated most warmly!

Click here to find out more.

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

We’ve seen apes on the streets, strange things in ice cream, free singles, charity llamas, missing inflatable bosoms and Christmas stunts galore. But, most pressingly, there has been Dr Pepper and their stunt-gone-bad, which is the only contender in the opening category.

Spectacular failures

Dr Pepper cheekily decided that they would get themselves a little bit of free attention a few months ago by announcing that they would give a free bottle of their syrupy soda drink to everyone in the USA if Guns and Roses brought out their long-awaited album, Chinese Democracy, by the end of 2008. The assumption was that this would be extremely unlikely, given Axl Rose’s long record of procrastination.

It was a great idea for stunt, given that it involved no financial outlay on their part and got people talking about the drink – not one of the most popular brands, being something of an acquired taste – and that, at the time of the stunt’s inception, there was only a slim chance of the album coming out.

The only problem was that the Guns and Roses album came out a few weeks ago, to mediocre reviews, and 365 million people were suddenly entitled to a free bottle of Dr Pepper. The company immediately went on the record saying that that there was a 24 hour window of opportunity in which to claim a free drink coupon from the Dr Pepper website, but demand was so high that the server crashed, leaving many people drink-free and deeply irate, as only thousands of fizzy drink addicts deprived their fix of sugar and caffeine can get. The negative spin immediately went viral, leaving Dr Pepper’s brand image in a sorry state.

More interestingly, Axl Rose has since threatened legal action and Dr Pepper have had their brand paraded in the press unrelentingly, leading to some speculation that Axl Rose’s complaint may be a stunt in itself, with a dual role – to keep the names of both Dr Pepper and Guns and Roses in the papers for as long as possible. Both Dr Pepper and Guns and Roses have been damaged by the release of Chinese Democracy – perhaps this is their way of keeping some traction for both brands. There must be someone, somewhere, hoping that continuous mention of the brand will prove the theory that all publicity is good publicity. It’s possible that the protracted complaints may yield as much brand recognition as either brand could hope for, but the burning question is: are Dr Pepper enjoying the controversy and the gallons of ink expended on the story? I seriously doubt it.

News-grabbers

Jessica Alba

• Campari, unafraid of recycling the old cliché of the saleability of a drinks product next to a sexy A List celeb, have announced that they are releasing a limited edition calendar featuring Jessica Alba, post-baby and back in trim, in various sultry poses. They will be releasing only 9,999 copies of the calendar and can guarantee a welter of media interest just by limiting the access the public can have to the calendar. As part of a PR campaign that will run over into the New Year, it should do great trade, as people buying the calendar are unlikely to care too much if the stunt is a cliché.
• A quirkily different approach to selling sex is the one taken by Australian men’s mag Ralph, which claims to have lost 130,000 inflatable breasts at sea en route from China – they were supposed to be a free gift for the January issue. Someone would appear to have boobed, but just look closely at the reports – the editor is throwing about quotes about the possibility of Somali pirates stealing them and the Maritime Safety Authority has no knowledge of anything lost at sea. It’s just the sort of cheeky stunt that goes down well as Christmas approaches.
• George Michael has been touting his latest bid for attention and chart dominance by charitably offering a free download of December Song on his website, which will be available as of December 25th. The reason it has received attention is that 1) it’s his first Christmas record since 1984’s Last Christmas and 2) it seems to put paid to reports that he is on the verge of retirement. Cue hyperbole in the press.
• Talking of charitable intentions, some real charities have been in on the action too – Christmas is one of the big push times for the big charities. Most successful, stuntwise, were World Vision, who launched their range of Must Have Gifts – which include mosquito nets for African families and Llamas for Bolivian families, who can sell the wool at market – by parading a llama down Oxford Street. Animals, it seems, still go down well.
• Gap and Mulberry have teamed up once again to raise funds for AIDS charities by releasing a limited edition RED bag in time for Christmas. They have received plenty of attention for this sort of stunt before and now is no exception.
• There’s also the story about Premiere Inns’ charitable intentions towards an eccentric man who has eaten Christmas dinner with them every day of his life but who can no longer afford to continue his fetishistic feeding habit thanks to the credit crunch. Premiere Inns’ PR people, their stunt-meters set to overdrive, have persuaded the company to offer him a free meal for the duration of the credit crunch; they are eating up a fair amount of column inches as a consequence, rolling together Christmas, charity and the recession in one easy to swallow package.
• This week’s overall winner, to my mind, is the promotional stunt for the 40th anniversary DVD release of Planet of the Apes, which saw a number of people dressed in ape suits parading around London and invading the Piccadilly line. It’s a near perfect PR stunt in that it gives good photograph opportunities (especially with London commuters studiously ignoring the simian stuntsters) and allows for a slew of attention-grabbing puns (both the Sun and the Mail went for the ‘tube drives people ape’ option) whilst making sure that the product in question is unavoidably mentioned in press reports, thanks to the carefully recreated film costumes the actors were wearing.

Simians underground

Charming Failures

• The most charming failure was the London restaurant which released a limited edition sprout-flavoured ice cream for Christmas. This would have been a wonderful story and a great way of getting brand coverage, if only the restaurant had named itself! If anyone knows which restaurant it is, perhaps they should let the world know… or at least advise them to get a better PR firm.
• It’s sad to see how many brands give a great story but don’t get a mention – for example, the £1 million Christmas tree that has been floating through the media recently should surely have a name attached to it – but there is no sight of one that I have come across.

It’s noticeable that, even looking at a single week, the old clichés still abound – semi-naked ladies next to alcoholic beverages, animals, pop stars and so on jostle for position in the press whilst interesting ideas like the sprout-flavoured ice cream disappear – and that carefully built brand stories take second place to something happening. It’ll be interesting to see what the next week brings.

Please send word of any notable stunts to publicitystunt@borkowski.co.uk

Take Guitar Hero, for example; the awesome marketing power behind this much-loved computer game is undeniable and whilst one might argue that its latest incarnation, Guitar Hero World Tour, doesn’t really need to be plugged, hey, they went ahead and produced a viral campaign anyway.

And I’ve got to say I love it; it’s smart, clever and obviously has traction, given that it has accumulated 1,587,794 views, nearly 7000 comments and is clearly driving a huge online conversation. In the past I have experienced promo hubris – the belief of some brands that seasonal desirability negates the need for further marketing spend on promo.

The Guitar Hero boys, however, haven’t sat back on their Christmas laurel wreaths; instead they have worked hard with the drive to promote their latest offering. I hope they will be rewarded when the sales are evaluated. Let’s just hope that EUK warehouses are not full of the product come January.