Posts Tagged ‘financial times’

Another week of charting the ups and downs of celebrity, first in the Guardian, discussing the rise, fall and rapid rise again of Russell Brand, who has risen phoenix-like out of the ashes of Sachsgate to find himself on the verge of international stardom. You can read the full article here, but here’s my note of caution:

“But will he stay the course? ‘Very difficult to predict,’ says the publicist and historian of celebrity Mark Borkowski. ‘He’s had a huge amount of American fame in a very short space of time. But standup comics from the UK don’t have a good track record – not many succeed. And tucked away somewhere on his torso is a self-destruct button. America is still very small-c conservative. There is,’ Borkowski adds, ‘still time for him to mess it up.’

Talking of messing things up, I was asked to comment the effect of Tiger Woods’ meltdown on the brands that have supported him over the years. According to Paul J Davies’s article, When star power finds the rough (Financial Times, April 7th): “…the stock market value of all the companies endorsed by Mr Woods collectively lost $5bn-$12bn by the middle of December [last year].” Read the rest of this entry »

The Financial Times report on a blog that’s gone viral, complaining about the food on a Virgin flight from Mumbai to Heathrow, apparently written by a creative at WCRS advertising agency. They asked me for my take on the matter.

“…some bloggers … suggest it was a viral marketing campaign by Virgin, a charge the company strenuously denies. Others believe it to be a shameless bit of self-promotion by the author, Oliver Beale, who happens to be a creative at advertising agency WCRS. But both Mr Beale and the agency seem keen to distance themselves from the e-mail.

“Mark Borkowski, public relations expert, believes it would be a foolish company that risked a viral campaign like this one. He suggests the contagiousness is down to more than providing light relief from a gloomy climate: rather, people feel frustrated at their complaints being ignored by companies, especially banks.”

To read the full article, click here.

There’s a short review of The Fame Formula in the Financial Times on 23rd January. Stephen Cave also discusses Fame by Mark Rowlands and The Star as Icon: Celebrity in the Age of Mass Consumption by Daniel Herwitz.

“It’s these myths [of the iconic early Hollywood stars] that are exploded by Mark Borkowski in his jolly romp The Fame Formula: How Hollywood’s Fixers, Fakers and Star Makers Created the Celebrity Industry.” writes Cave. “His book celebrates the publicists – the myth-makers who turned Hollywood’s patchy raw material into household names. Running his own PR firm, Borkowski has an insider’s eye, and his book is full of revelatory detail.

“Some stunts he describes have already passed into legend: Fox studios insured Betty Grable’s legs for $1m in 1943, while the three-year hunt for the girl to play Scarlett O’Hara in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind was “arguably the most influential publicity campaign of all time”. Borkowski particularly revels in the antics of maverick publicity agent Jim Moran, who led a real bull through a real china shop to promote a musician’s flagging career, and had to be stopped from using dwarfs on kites to fly ad banners over New York’s Central Park.”

To read the full review, click here.