Posts Tagged ‘improperganda’

In the second Improperganda podcast, Mark Borkowski talks to Todd Ant, one of America’s premier sports broadcasters.

The discussion delves beneath the surface of sporting reputation and looks at the similarities and differences in reaction to the misbehaviour of sports stars on either side of the Atlantic. The conversation takes in everyone from John Terry to Babe Ruth and begins by looking at efforts to educate trouble-making out of young American sports stars.

“Give a 22 year old man $1 million, alcohol, celebrity and a bit too much free time and trouble will find him. It’s just a fact of life. I don’t care who he is. It’s just a potentially highly volatile mix!” Dr. Johnny Benjamin

“I’m not a role model… Just because I dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.” Charles Barkley

The Improperganda podcast is a weekly forensic inspection of the truths, untruths, half-truths, myths, histories and gossip that surround modern culture, celebrity, fame, brands and PR.

Each episode will feature an interview or discussion with someone with a unique perspective on the world, be they publicists, journalists, authors, artists or just interesting human beings with an inside track on the underside of the headlines or the digital hemisphere.

 

 Marks Podcast 2: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

For the first episode of his Improperganda podcast, Mark Borkowski talks to Tom Payne, author of Fame: From the Bronze Age to Britney.

The discussion covers the myths and histories of celebrity and publicity ancient and modern, taking in everything from Heracles to WAGS, Britney Spears to ritual sacrifice and Troy to John Terry.

The Improperganda podcast is a weekly forensic inspection of the truths, untruths, half-truths, myths, histories and gossip that surround modern culture, celebrity, fame, brands and PR.

Each episode will feature an interview or discussion with someone with a unique perspective on the world, be they publicists, journalists, authors, artists or just interesting human beings with an inside track on the underside of the headlines or the digital hemisphere.

 

 Marks Podcast - Episode 1: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I was asked to comment on the fallout from Tiger Woods’s bad week in the press by the Guardian last week – the resulting article appears in today’s Media section and online under the headline In Need of a Tigerish Attorney. I took a critical look at the way he and his lawyer, Mark NeJame, are handling the story. Here’s an excerpt:

“Tiger Woods’s nasty bump on the head after his car’s tussle with a fire hydrant has rendered the golfer mostly speechless. It’s all very well that he’s admitted “transgressions” and muttered an apology, but at the heart of the press release he put out is a cry for silence and privacy. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the Orlando attorney Mark NeJame, who has made his name defending drug offenders and people accused of murder, is the man behind this strategy. The ‘Johnnie Cochran of Central Florida’ has thrown his weight behind the Tiger Woods brand at the formerly squeaky-clean golfer’s darkest hour.

“Attorneys are the new breed of tough image protector – PR spin technicians are losing out to hard-nosed lawyers. But will NeJame’s strategy help his client to regain his flawless veneer of celebrity? Woods’s ignominy is fast becoming one of 2009’s top trending topics and has exposed the media-shy golfer to the dark side of ‘improperganda’.”

To read the full article, click here.

I was also asked for my opinion on the Tiger Woods affair and whether or not he can rebuild his brand’s reputation by Channel 4 News – to read the article, click here.

Today’s Independent features a story about stunts at the Edinburgh Festival, mentioning me and a number of other Edinburgh stuntsters, notably Malcolm Hardee. The article uses a number of the stunts that made it into my online and on the streets #Twithibition, as well as a number of more recent stunts and is a good, brief guide to the great stunts of Edinburgh past and present.

Sheep in Edinburgh

“PR expert Mark Borkowski , who is a veteran of the Fringe, has a record as colourful as Hardee’s, having been responsible for launching the extreme, chainsaw-juggling, circus group Archaos on an unsuspecting Edinburgh public in 1991. In order to promote their show, the troupe were pictured sawing a car in half on the Royal Mile and leaping over parked cars on motorbikes on the mound.

“Later in the Nineties, Borkowski took on the Jim Rose Circus, which provided the PR another opportunity to wind up the press and the authorities. Among numerous well-documented occurrences, Rose discovered a forgotten by-law that allowed sheep herding up the Royal Mile before 6am and duly obliged. Some of his flock entered the council offices before being herded out again, a not-so-sheepish gesture of anti-authoritarianism.

“This year, [the publicity stunt is] a craft that will be celebrated by a new award called the Malcolm Hardee Cunning Stunt Award. Already being considered for this award is Shed Simove, the Ideas Man, whose publicity material will over the next three weeks be printed on lavatory paper and put in toilets all around Edinburgh. ‘Pooblicity’, as he calls it.”

To read the full story, click here. To follow my #Twithibition, click here and search the site for #twithibition. For more information on the stunts recorded in the #Twithibition, click here.

Reading about the Wellcome Collection’s stunt to promote research into the science of the freak show, featuring contortionist Delia du Sol, in the Evening Standard yesterday, I was reminded how, in the dark days of the recession before the big one, I met an extraordinary contortionist called Hugo Zamoratte.

Delia du Sol

Zamoratte was an Argentina exile who was able to stuff himself into bottles; he had discovered a natural talent for dislocating his joints after he accidentally dislocated his arm in the Argentinian National Guard. After 20 years of practicing his art in South America, training in yoga and gymnastics all the while, he illegally crawled into the US from Mexico through a tiny sewer outlet.

On his arrival in America, Zamoratte’s extraordinary skill was quickly exploited and showcased by the Ringling Brothers. He became a national sensation in the USA. My client at the time, Gerry Cottle’s Circus, were impressed by his ability to stuff himself inside bottles that held as little as ten litres and booked him for their annual season at Wembley Arena. I was handed the task of generating media interest.

Hugo Zamoratte

I spent weeks researching the great contortionists and, in the course of my research, I discovered the Art of Enterology. Escapology we all knew about – Houdini escaped from things whilst the great Enterologist squeezed into tiny spaces. The art had died out thanks to the more immediate thrill that escapology presented – both took weeks of preparation, but the escape happened in minutes, whereas the enterologists had to take their time getting into the right shape to enter a bottle. Audiences naturally inclined to the flashier, more immediate art.

I stole the idea of this long-lost practice and applied it to Zamoratte, dragging him through all the media hoops available at the time, from Jonathan Ross’ The Last Resort to the Wogan show, presenting him as the missing link in the art of Enterology. Ross still mentions Zamoratte when I see him – his impact was enormous. He garnered a great deal of attention for the Gerry Cottle Circus and went on to become a true international phenomenon.

And then he vanished, like Mickey Rourke’s wrestler. For all I know he is trapped in a bottle somewhere like a genie, wishing he’d spent more time practising escapology. In the meantime, I was fired up with the art of Enterology and, when Britvic asked me to help them launch their new design of bottle a few years later, I returned to the idea, setting up a series of auditions to find a new enterologist who could fit themselves inside an outsized version of the new Britvic bottle.

There was only one person who could do it; Delia du Sol, who is now working with the Wellcome Trust. She was a brilliant eneterologist – the only one who could enter Britvic’s bottle. She had only one flaw – she could never close the little door in the side of the bottle and would have been left exposed, like the overgrown Alice in the White Rabbit’s house, if one of my team hadn’t been on hand to shut the door behind her.

Delia in the Britvic bottle

Wellcome’s stunt has no connection with me, I should point out. They have clearly imitated the stunt, recreated it now that some time has passed – very flattering it is too. I’m of the opinion that my book, Improperganda, inspired them to do so. Secondhand copies of the book have been flying off the shelves in the wake of the release of The Fame Formula. Perhaps it’s time for a reprint of Improperganda?

More to the point, I wonder what other stunts of mine that appear in the book will be imitated in the coming months as companies find that they need more interesting ways of communicating their brands and celebrities over the fog of the credit crunch.