Posts Tagged ‘mark borkowski’

I took part in the Cambridge Union debate last night, arguing for the proposition ‘This House Believes that Reality TV Represents Everything Wretched about Britain Today’. I underestimated the space, at how steeped in grandeur it is, and found myself more than a little nervous.

The debate was well attended; over two thirds full. Joining me to argue for the proposition were Max Clifford and the retiring Union president, Jonathan Laurence. Opposing the motion were Times journalist Hugo Rifkind, showbiz writer Zoe Griffin and James McQuillan, who appeared on The Apprentice.

The other speakers last night went for a comic interpretation of the motion. My technique was more serious-minded, more Old Testament – Quentin Tarantino fans might have deduced I was trying to mimic Samuel L Jackson’s famous biblical Pulp Fiction speech. Read the rest of this entry »

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’ve had a dose of New Year cheer after yesterday’s blog – I’ve just learned that the episode of Eric Schwartzman’s wonderful weekly podcast On the Record, covering all the latest issues in the world of PR, in which I discussed The Fame Formula, is the second most popular download of last year. Most cheering of all, the interview was recorded in August 2008!

If you never heard the podcast, it’s still available by clicking here. It’s also well worth subscribing to the On the Record podcast – there’s always something interesting to listen to…

Here are two brilliant three minute films of highlights from last Friday’s adventures through London with Tony Kaye in a fleet of Nissan Cubes. Everything was filmed on Flip HD cameras. Read the blogs, linked here, for more information.

It seems that there is a total sense of humour failure endemic throughout the world when it comes to stunts like the ‘Balloon Boy’ incident, as the ongoing trial of the parents proves – they apparently pleaded guilty only after the wife, who is Japanese, was threatened with deportation.

Certainly, the need to think about wider concerns makes outlandish and outrageous stunts a more difficult prospect in this health and safety and desperately money-conscious world. Some years ago, a band wanted me to help them arrange to completely stop traffic in Piccadilly Circus so they could play a gig from a flat bed truck – I had to hold a hand up and say “what are we going to do if an ambulance comes through with a heart attack victim on board?” The need to stand back and question all possible outcomes is even more imperative nowadays.

As much as the Rupert Pupkinish hedonistic approach is appealing, for its ability to grab headlines and for the sheer thrill of pulling something extraordinary and outrageous off, the parents of ‘Balloon Boy’ are proof positive that care has to be taken and that serious thought has to be applied if you don’t want an initially amused and fascinated public to turn on you if even the smallest thing goes wrong. Fame for the sake of it can be a costly business.

The Swedish military certainly have a way with a publicity stunt, if the story that’s surfaced about poorly designed military bras is anything to go by. Or so my churnophrenic state of mind is telling me, as I dig unceasingly for the truth behind the news. Put it this way, if it’s not a PR stunt, somebody is going to receive a serious dressing down.

According to reports, “flimsy military brassieres are unable to stand up to the strains imposed when female Swedish troops perform ‘rigorous exercises’”. The bras are “routinely bursting open or even [catch] fire – so forcing busty young conscripts to hurriedly strip off in the field.”

This being Sweden, they are presumably not bursting out into Barbara Windsor cackles when it happens, but it couldn’t otherwise be any more Carry On if it tried. And the churnophrenic part of me is wondering who could have planted this one on the press.

Strangely it is the Swedish Conscription Council, an organisation concerned with the rights of conscript troops in the Swedish forces, who have been most vocal on the matter. Council spokesperson Paulina Rehbinder stated in Swedish paper The Local that the problems have persisted for twenty years. “Unaccountably, however, it appears that the male-dominated Swedish military hierarchy has failed to act.”

But, with 2000 new young female recruits said to be joining the armed forces next year – women who will no doubt be expecting to be taken seriously when they are sent of to conflict zones like Afghanistan – they may have to sort out their military bra supply.

My guess is that this story was designed to encourage young men to join up in case this doesn’t happen. And if it doesn’t happen, what then?

Swedish women soldiers! Questionable bras! Striptease in battle situations! I wouldn’t be surprised if someone makes a film…

Maybe I’ve reached a midlife crisis of confidence in the news, given how long I’ve worked in PR, but the more I read the papers or listen to the radio these days, the more I find myself considering the underbelly of the stories that I’m hearing and pondering on who exactly delivered a particular story and if they’ve spun it so that it would arrive on the particular day knowing what effect it might have on the world. Actually, I think it’s more than that – it may be becoming an illness. I may be developing Churnophrenia, a disease that affects publicists of a certain age and forces them into ever more desperate attempts to join the dots.

Everywhere I look I think I see small stories blowing themselves out of all proportion, being pumped up by the people behind the news agenda, floating in the headlines like ungainly zeppelins spinning slowly out of control. I’m not entirely sure what is imagined and what is truth any more, and so, to try and find out, I routinely find myself picking compulsively over the minutiae of who, what, where, when and why a story might have been spun out to create the biggest impact, all the while playing the news matrix like some vast, infernal sudoku puzzle that MUST be completed.

Take yesterday morning’s news that Harris Tweed has decided to drop all reference to Scotland in their promotional material to “avoid a backlash over the release of the Lockerbie bomber” – I immediately developed a cold, shivering sweat as I considered the possibilities.

The first thought that struck me, like a falling brick, was that it’s perfectly possible that there could be no hidden agenda; there might actually be a backlash. A brief moment of respite from the neurosis! Better than medication, I took the resurgent memory of the time the French irritated the USA in 2003 by opposing the invasion of Iraq, and the Americans renamed French Fries as Freedom Fries in revenge. The chill abated – of course it’s easier by far for an irate American to give up buying Harris Tweed than give up their favourite over-salted fried potato sticks, so there really could be reason for the tweed makers to be cautious.

Then I remembered the debate I took part in last week for the Radio Academy, which made me brutally aware of how many people accept and acknowledge the use of spin to make the news, of how many consume the information knowingly, unquestioningly. And here I am breaking out in a paranoid sweat again. I am Jack’s Churnophrenic sense of confusion.

Not even the idea that there may genuinely be crofters out there panicking about losing sales to the wrath of America can save me now – I can still feel a realisation trickling down my spine like ice: if I were looking for a good way to get Harris Tweed stitched into the national consciousness and talked about the world over, I would certainly consider planting a story about it, connected to a hot topic of the day if possible, primed to burst onto the news agenda on a Monday and help dictate the way the week’s news ran.

My god, it even ties in nicely to the launch of Dan Brown’s new book, The Lost Symbol – the hero of which wears Harris Tweed, probably even to bed.

Should I seek treatment for my condition? Is there any hope for me? And, more to the point, am I alone in this Churnophrenic inability to be entirely sure what is truth and what is spin? Worryingly, I think not…

Lucozade is going through PR hell at the moment, in the wake of lurid headlines such as “The Lucozade Bombers” referring to the thwarted plot to blow up seven planes with bombs concealed inside bottles of the energy drink. The Guardian asked me what I though that Lucozade would be doing about it, in an article published today.

“Smaller brands might secretly welcome the association or at least make an irreverent joke about it, reckons Borkowski. ‘You can see Mock The Week having great fun with it but it’s too uncomfortable for the parent company. The problem is these brands are owned by enormous companies who are incredibly nervous because of beagle-smoking issues.’”

To read the full article, click here.

Some of the contestants in the X Factor, wanting to learn a thing or two about the publicity tricks of the past to help get them through the tough new auditions system, (where they have to face not only the barbed comments of Simon Cowell and co, but the baying of a full-throttle audience out for carefully-packaged blood) have turned to the Fame Formula for ideas, it seems, as this picture from the ITV website proves.

Look carefully at the hands of the ape on the right...

A hug from Danni and Simon may be all very well, but it seems that The Fame Formula is the hardened fame seeker’s reference book of choice when it comes to helping build the courage to leap onto the first greasy rung of the ladder of stardom. Personally, I can’t help hoping that some more audition hopefuls will, er… ape these guys and go out and buy the book…

The guys from Bragster, the social networking site for daredevils, were the ones dressed in the gorilla suits, braving the raised eyebrows of Cowell and co. The site’s boss Bertrand was dared to take part by his colleagues, with £1000 going to charity on the condition that he get a hug from one of the main judges. Here’s a link to some footage of him in action on the ITV website – I particularly like his version of I Want to Be Like You…

Politicians may have a lot to sweat about at the moment, but the appearance of actual sweat can knock back their image management incalculably. The Guardian published a piece on this today, with reference to the MP Bill Rammell’s sweat-drenched appearance on the BBC a couple of nights ago, and asked for my opinion on the matter.

Click here to read the story.