Has Britney killed off her career?
By now, you will know that Britney Spears’ much-vaunted comeback appearance at the MTV Video Music Awards was nothing short of a shambles. The singer, out-of-shape and seemingly dazed by the bright lights, stumbled through a lip-synced performance of her forthcoming single, Gimme More, in front of a perplexed showbusiness audience. PR expert Mark Borkowski […]
iPhones and plastic surgery
I have been approached by a UK plastic surgeon who wants to discuss publicizing his new treatment. The phone call was a bit of a long ramble but essentially he wants to be the first British practitioner to surgically alter thumbs to make using an iPhone easier. I hope he is not a prankster reacting […]
Has Britney killed off her career?
By now, you will know that Britney Spears’ much-vaunted comeback appearance at the MTV Video Music Awards was nothing short of a shambles. The singer, out-of-shape and seemingly dazed by the bright lights, stumbled through a lip-synced performance of her forthcoming single, Gimme More, in front of a perplexed showbusiness audience. PR expert Mark Borkowski […]
MTV on the slide?
Britney Spears – Gimme More [Live Vma’s 2007] Uploaded by Wonderful-Life Britney Spears was the star of the MTV Video Music Awards last night in what the channel hyped as the fallen pop princess’ long-awaited comeback. Comeback – personally, I am still waiting for her to go away. It’s sad to think that the mighty […]
Wispa campaign evaluated
Still the innuendo flows that our Wispa campaign was a hyped fake. The cynical business pages of the Sunday Telegraph did its own evaluation. Read the results http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money
Cabbage crates coming over the briny
The RAF is missing a fantastic PR opp. The Russian military are proving to be much cleverer on the PR front that the dusty Air Staff. Yesterday British fighter jets were scrambled to intercept eight Russian “Bear” reconnaissance aircraft in the second such incident in recent weeks. Four Tornado F3 planes took off from various […]
I smell a stunt.
“The laughing Lotus Louts; Pair vandalise sports car and then put film on MySpace!” screams the headline in the Evening Standard. The story is about two hooligans – or as one blogger colourfully describes them – “retarded knob jockeys”, who filmed themselves wrecking a £30,000 Lotus Elise parked in a London street then posting the […]
Spinning of Wikipedia
Lets support the SourceWatch campaign to out the spinning of Wikipedia http://www.prwatch.org/node/6391 In the current issue it highlights the deeds of the dark forces of ” big PR” So far they have logged several attempts at spin into the respective SourceWatch profiles, including: * Chevron deleting the article on “Biodiesel” *Military contractor Raytheon deleting information […]
Veet pain in the PR neck
Ben Goldacre of the www.guardian.co.uk neatly summarises why irrelevant surveys – a tool used by countless lazy PR companies are a useless device. Read on… http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/sep/01/1 I wish we could cut out the virulent cancer of incompetent PR execs.
Inventive industrial relations
The chaos caused by the tube strike should have inspired a creative opportunity for industrial relations innovation, as well as a PR coup. Once again, lurid headlines condemning the union leaders who had organised the strike did little to communicate the issues and the heart of the dispute. In general, the Great British unwashed have […]
Bite it and believe the hype
Trevor Beattie the god of creativity in ad land has recognized our work on Wispa in this mornings Independent. “Shout it from the rooftops. Wispa is back. And the campaign behind its return has been a joy to behold. The oldest, subtlest and most effective form of advertising known to mankind is word of mouth. […]
Big Brother winner revealed but show is the loser
From the Scotsman 1st September 2007 Last night, Brian Belo was voted this year’s winner. The 20-year-old data clerk, who claimed he had no idea who Shakespeare was, pipped the favourites, twins Sam and Amanda Marchant, 19, to claim the £100,000 winner’s cheque. Mark Borkowski, a PR adviser, said the show had proven effective in […]
Bloggers Paradise
I joined (late) a motley crew of bloggers who had decamped to a North London eatery the other night, gathered together by “Don’t Panic” to twitter on the subject of social networking. The posse included Stuart Bruce – Wolfstar http://www.stuartbruce.biz/ Simon Collister – Edelman http://simoncollister.typepad.com/ Stephen Davies – Webitpr http://www.prblogger.com/ Ian Delaney – NMK http://twopointouch.com/ […]
Hats off … the Wispa-ring campaign
Its not often that praise is handed out in the notoriously bitchy world of PR, but I was pleased to see read this blog today paying tribute to our Wispa campaign http://t4w.blogs.com/spinningaround/2007/08/hats-off-the-wi.html. Thanks to James Gordon-MacIntosh of Seventy Seven. James has often encouraged me to sit on panels and talk about my work and I […]
Smokers' Delight
All today’s papers have reported on Winnie Langley the defiant smoker who celebrated reaching 100 yesterday. Pictured lighting up from one of the candles on her birthday cake, Winnie, from Croydon, was reported to have been smoking for 93 years and has no plans to quit just yet. Surely this is good news for the […]
Brissenden's blog
I have just discovered my old pal John Brissenden’s blog its a joy and a treasure. Read it http://johnbrissenden.wordpress.com/
Grey Power
Unbelievably the “wrinklies” public image has had a face lift this morning across the media. Usually it’s a hopeless task for poor PR folk who are heroically attempting to peddle the joys of the over 60’s. Valiant attempts to sell old age often stumble chiefly because of the media’s obsession to remain attractive to the […]
Fuss About Nothing
Would be celebs are so transparent when trying to keep their name in the press. It amazes me just how crazy things have become when a slew of stories with the yawn factor hit the pages of the press. Emily Maitlis, shock horror, showed too much leg when she was promoting the news. Kate Moss […]
The Whisper on Wispa: Never Underestimate the power of 1980's nostalgia
I have received a flurry of emails from fellow PR friends and journalists who have realised that Borkowski is behind the relaunch of Wispa. Many erroneously think we created an online campaign to bring back Wispa. We designed a press campaign informed by the amount of on line pressure groups that had been running for […]
Lame and Lamer
Another lame publicity stunt this morning – a youthful police constable riding a skateboard. I assume this was an attempt to make plod more cool with kids. This scam is nearly as creative as Great Western Trains announcing on Monday that they are employing a poet to amuse the punters at stations around their network.