There’s a strange satisfaction in watching the mighty McDonald’s get nibbled at by a northern bakery that once sold four sausage rolls for a quid. Greggs vs McDonald’s: The Fast Feud Channel4 isn’t just a documentary — it’s a morality play for our times, with pasties as protagonists and PR as the real power behind […]
I’ve been continuing to ponder Prince Harry’s PR woes laid bare in his BBC confessional. When you repeatedly cast yourself as the eternally wounded, misunderstood prince, the public doesn’t lean in with empathy, they switch off. Or worse, they roll their eyes and reach for the popcorn.Harry isn’t losing because he’s being honest. He’s losing […]
The death of the Pope is more than a news story; it’s a moment to pause. A moment to consider the cultural value of humility, of grace. High-minded topics for a humble publicist.Whether you admired him or regarded him with suspicion, he embodied something increasingly alien to public life: the notion that transgression can be […]
So, did the Blue Horizon space trip break the glass ceiling — or just inflate another PR bubble? That’s the question I asked myself this morning, wading through the media tickertape fallout from the all-female space jaunt, fronted by Katy Perry, aboard a rocket carrying a payload of celebrities, selfies, and soft-focus sentimentality into the […]
Mark Borkowski is a highly acclaimed PR and Communications industry figure, renowned for his expertise and unmatched experience spanning four decades. His influence in the industry has earned him a place alongside figures like Alistair Campbell and in PR Week’s list of the 25 most influential industry figures. A sharp observer of the cultural zeitgeist, […]
There’s a strange new behaviour quietly sweeping through the body of modern business. It’s the quiet epidemic of the corporate mind.It’s not disruptive innovation. It’s not some bold new AI.It’s silence. Cold, calculated, and maddening silence.Let me take you into a scene: a client. Two months of deep strategic work. Narrative building. Positioning. The kind […]
Exclusive: The Duke of Sussex is facing a legacy-threatening moment of truth in the worsening rift over Sentebale, warns PR expert Mark Borkowski.Forget the endless carousel of Sussex fails. There are opinions galore about Sussex Netflix deals and Sussex “exclusives” feeding the algorithmic maw. But Sentebalegate is far more worrying. Strip away all that’s gone before and […]
It’s not Watergate—it’s something far more unhinged. Signalgate: a Trumpian soap opera scripted by Jesse Armstrong, where national security collides with reality TV energy, and everyone thinks they’re the smartest person in the encrypted room. This wasn’t clandestine espionage. This was a defence strategy kicked around in a Signal group chat like a bunch of […]
I have been a poorly boy this week. Somewhere between the Lemsip and the fevered doomscrolling of a bloke struck down by an unholy strain of man flu, a revelation hit me. And not the soothing, metaphysical kind. The Book of Revelation kind.Trumpets (and Trump-ets), beasts, AI fever dreams, Mars rockets, and the occasional false […]
A thought for Monday. When I wrote The Art of the Publicity Stunt, it wasn’t just a book, it was a manifesto. It was 1999, when the stunt was the tool of the maverick, the performer on the fringes who understood that attention wasn’t given; it was taken. The Borkowski way was about disruption, but […]