Rebecca Adlington to be new face of Speedo
British Olympic gold medallist Rebecca Adlington will be announced as the new face of swimwear brand Speedo on Thursday, according to the Telegraph. Adlington will join Michael Phelps, who won a world record eight golds at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, as Speedo’s official face of the world’s biggest swimwear brand. Phelps has been sponsored by […]
Winehouse in good publicity shock
All publicity is good publicity, the cliché tells us. In fact the cliché jumps up and down and insists that this is so and has been known to stamp its foot if anyone disagrees, as news from St. Lucia proves. The Caribbean island, as any celebrity-watcher should be able to tell you, is the latest […]
Dark Satanic Press Release Mills
A new year, a new American President, a new sense of austerity and asperity pervading the world and yet still no sign that sections of the PR world are little more than spam-merchants, pumping out press releases at the mill without any thought or caution, any sense of building the brand. Press releases promoting all […]
The Sexy Factor
Femail Magazine January 15th 2009 Rachel Porter asked a panel of experts to give their waspish views on Cheryl Cole, Dannii Minogue, Kelly Brook and Amanda Holden, on which of the four should be crowned the queen of reality TV. Mark Borkowski, PR guru and author of the Fame Formula, a history of the Hollywood […]
King of the High Street risks repeat of a reality TV disaster
That is the risk Sainsbury’s chief executive Justin King seems prepared to take after leading his supermarket through the economic storm to record its best Christmas ever while most rivals struggled. With King tipped to return to his old stomping ground of Marks & Spencer to replace outgoing Sir Stuart Rose as chief executive, the […]
Ronnie O' Sullivan says snooker has gone to pot
The protagonists dress as if they were auditioning for jobs as cruise ship entertainers. The atmosphere has all the excitement of a wet Wednesday in Bognor; as for the pace of the game itself – well, put it like this: a bad game on a slow day makes the average funeral procession look like the […]
Prince Harry and the Racist Remarks
How disappointing to read about Prince Harry’s use of racist language in the press over the weekend, not so much because it’s Harry – it’s no surprise, really, that he’s prone to calling people ‘Paki’ and ‘Raghead’ in fun, given that his idea of fun has seen him dressing in Nazi uniform for parties – […]
Morris Man Crisis Meets Disney Orgy
Yesterday, searching online, I rediscovered the pornographic Disney poster, The Disneyland Memorial Orgy, from 60s counterculture magazine The Realist and started to think about the ways in which brands operate in the 21st century. Looking at this poster, as well as at an article in the Telegraph suggesting that Morris dancing could die out in […]
A Year of Change
2008 has crunched to a close and, this morning, large parts of Britain have woken to a clean sheet of snow, covering most of the names and ideas that haunted, plagued or invigorated us last year. Buried under that sheet are names, soundbites, happenings, ideas and all the briefly-gripping themes that cluttered up 2008. All […]
Pope Benedict latest PR mistake
Is there any modern communicators walking the corridors of the Vatican? Clearly, 21st century media advice is in short supply. Was the Holy Father made aware of the dangers in his end-of-year speech to senior Vatican staff? There has been some unfortunate fallout this morning, after his decree that “saving” humanity from homosexual or transsexual […]
Fame for nothing: how the Iraqi shoe chucker will be remembered (or not)
“Shoe-throwing man is now his brand–He should be sent all over the world to throw shoes at people we don’t like.” — Mark Borkowski on how the Iraqi reporter who threw his shoes at President Bush can create tongue-in-cheek commercial gain from his fleeting fame Listen to show
A Festive Message
What a year it’s been! But now is not quite the time to reflect on that – now is the time to pause for breath, kick off your shoes and relax as the tsunami that is the festive season subsumes you entirely. Enjoy it! You might spend the next few days watching the new Wallace […]
Grasping the New Communication Nettle
In previous recessions and downturns, many companies came to realise that the only way to steer themselves away of the maelstrom was to turn to the steadying ship of good PR. Perhaps Bill Gates’ aphorism – “If I’m down to my last buck, I’ll spend it on PR” – should be embraced as the mantra […]
The Next Big Forgettable Ephemera Thing
A fascinating article in yesterday’s Guardian, marking the rise and rise of TV merchandising, which started out by accident thanks to Mattel bringing out a range of toys to coincide with Conan the Barbarian that it couldn’t sell, forcing the company to create He Man and the Masters of the Universe and a plethora of […]
Bad Santas
Three out-of-work, recession-hit Santas were employed by Borkowski for a simple photo shoot for the company’s Christmas card, due to take place this afternoon. Unfortunately, they got thoroughly drunk beforehand and are currently rampaging around the streets of London. Fortunately, we had a video camera on hand and have been following them as they shout, […]
The new transparency
I was interested to read the latest Bare Feet Studios blog by Roxanne Darling on the need for transparency and new, big, clear thinking in advertising; it chimes in rather neatly with my views on the way PR should work in the coming years. “This post is part of my desire to both shine light […]
To Celeb, Perchance to Dream
I hear that Channel 4 has signed bed shop Dreams to sponsor Celebrity Big Brother, which returns to our screens next month for the first time since 2007. Celebrity Big Brother was “rested” last year following the Shilpa Shetty racism row, so it will be interesting to find out if the show can still interact […]
Too Many Fingers in the Pie
I was sent a beautiful and astonishing graphical representation of the cost of the bailout of the American economy yesterday – one that made my jaw tap my laptop’s keys and type out an expressive gasp of consternation when I saw it. The pie chart in question, below, was posted on the voltagecreative.com blog and […]
Arresting Change
Reading George Monbiot’s comment, in today’s Guardian, discussing the flurry of misinformation about climate change, I cannot help but think that the biggest global budgets, for corporations whose profit-making capabilities are threatened by the need for change, are thrown at secret briefs to the global PR giants, whose only remit is to sow confusion and […]
Recession and the Shannon Matthews case
In the hoo-ha surrounding the Shannon Matthews case, I find myself wondering about her mother’s motivations behind kidnapping her own daughter. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, even among the most morally dubious of people, and given the amount of attention and sympathy – from most quarters anyway – that the McCaan’s received, it […]