Selfie Politics
5 years ago he was, according to The Sunday Times, “more popular than Churchill” and the other was cleaning fish guts off the floor of Billingsgate Market. The Nick Clegg-Joey Essex selfie shows us how far these posers have come and how far our politics hasn’t. 2010’s Cleggomania came on the back of those ‘historic’ […]
The Grand National 2015: Don't airbrush Ladies Day
The boss of Aintree has called for “negative” photographs of Ladies Day at the Grand National to be banned. But isn’t getting dressed up, drinking too much and having fun part of the appeal? I spoke to Harry Wallop at the Daily Telegraph about this topic.
Lufthansa's crisis communications approach to Germanwings disaster
I would expect Lufthansa one of the largest airlines in Europe, both in terms of overall passengers carried and fleet size, to have invested in a substantial crisis provision. Sadly, for all corporations, things will go wrong in any given situation, we know this as Murphy’s Law. A multimillion pound crisis business has been built […]
Is anyone the winner?
So there are two questions in light of Clarkson being ‘sacked’. 1. Can the BBC win back the fans whilst reinventing a format for Top Gear without the key constituencies at the heart of the show. Is there a creative genius still throbbing inside the BBC to triumph with a new show and gather a […]
Jeremy Clarkson and the BBC: the corporation's latest comms crisis
Remember this new word: ‘voyeurgasm’ – translated as the joy of watching a media storm meltdown on all channels. Crisis and Clarkson fit hand in glove. He is a man resolutely himself, much loved and widely loathed. So, let’s mutter the unsayable – it will be a sad day when Clarkson packs away his webbed […]
The world now spins a story
Yesterday we got the news that Starbucks is to back a social storytelling start up. Of course. Today storytelling is colonising every aspect of business, taking precedence in the order of things. It’s not hard to see why stories are so powerful. Borkowski was built on the premise of stories and we have been telling […]
And it wasn't even raining!
Remember last year at the Oscars? “No, it wasn’t a marketing stunt”, said Samsung, who may have paid a reported £12m for its advertising “integration” but the company, it insisted, was every bit as astonished as everyone else when host Ellen De Generes’s star-studded selfie, taken during the broadcast on a Samsung smartphone, became the […]
We Must Not Help to Advance the ISIS Agenda
ISIS craves prominent news coverage, and they crave momentum behind their desire to spread terror. This week their heinous images spread quickly online – propaganda meant to both shock the West and recruit new devotees. It raised a sensitive issue for news outlets again. Should they show the images, after all just one click away […]
Leadership doesn’t come with a promise…
“Problems cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need people who can dream of things that never were.” – John Keats One thing is for sure, those with a true purpose don’t follow the rules! Nobody who had the honour of listening to Ben Saunders […]
Prince Andrew and the cold hard facts
As stories go, it’s a good one! Prince Andrew, underage sex, plus a reputation and questionable judgement already in question now under further scrutiny. This is the age of perceptions. Reputation is driven by what we feel and not by the cold, hard facts. Without a rock-solid purpose for yourself, being a spare is a […]
The ongoing UBER PR trip
You can say what you like about Uber, but when it comes to a value added experience to drive loyalty to their brand they are in the driver’s seat. In Uber’s first coordinated, multi-city event, film studio 20th Century Fox is giving users of the ride-sharing service a chance to win exclusive passes to an […]
The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game: Why is football so bad at PR?
My thoughts from The Drum earlier this week on why football is so bad at PR. The Ched Evans #fail juggernaut rumbles on. This negative fallout reframes football, sucking the hapless into its black hole. The whole affair suggests there is something rotten at the heart of the enterprise. Sadly, the idiot Evans’ hubristic soap […]
Hollywood terror
Certainly I did not predict the extent of the Sony hack, nor was I alone in suggesting that it might be a festive dose of creative hype to life a mediocre film. As it turns out, the ongoing escalation will text the strength of the top tier leadership and the ability to survive ruthless hacks […]
Brand Strength and the Political Media War
The Guardian’s Data Blog recently compared Russell Brand’s reach with that of the newspaper attempting to discredit him, The Sun. The findings were hardly a surprise, and merely confirmed a trend that we have been talking about at Borkowski.do for a long time. Where in years gone by the favour of The Sun newspaper was […]
Don't shoot the messenger!
Right now, Uber’s PR team should be celebrating having secured feature pieces in both the FT and Vanity Fair, the latter of which could have successfully repositioned the brand from its helter-skelter course. http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/12/uber-travis-kalanick-controversy Rather than enjoying a few strong pats on the back however, that team is probably going to have to put on […]
Dapper (Not-A-Barrel-Of) Laughs
Already this week (and it’s only Monday evening!) I have witnessed the rise and fall of a feckless nobody heralded as the next big TV icon. Injected into mainstream media by TV producers in search of profit, only to be dragged violently out again when the heat (allegedly) became too hot for the sponsors to […]
We Are Never, Ever, Ever Getting Back Together!
It seems that pop’s darling of the decade has turned diva this week as it was announced that Taylor Swift had pulled her entire back catalogue of music from Spotify. Through all the initial hubub, it seems that everybody’s missed the point: this is a publicity scam, and it’s one that she’s already rehearsed. The […]
A careless toss of a coin!
Whether you believe it or not isn’t the point. The announcement on Twitter that Cadbury’s had lost the festive spirit and cancelled supplies of chocolate coins fuelled an outcry of emotion from the crowd. That’s the point. Was this a stunt? That remains to be seen, but Cadbury’s failed to respect the emotions of their […]
The Distraction Strategy
I would argue there are some things you can teach and some things you cannot. I am still not convinced you can teach creativity for example, but you can certainly pass on how to be an appreciator and maybe that is the point here. PR is a craft. At the heart of that craft are […]
The way PR engages has changed and trust is key
Many of us have felt the shifting sands for some time but the Greenpeace, Lego and Shell narrative really does signal the last warning shot. This world demands trust above all and, alongside that, the right people in positions of power who understand the pressures. Traditional methodologies are no longer fit for purpose. A younger, […]