Mark My Words

The trouble is that generally there is a butterfly attention to fame and noteworthy issues these days. This causes issues for brands because ‘fame’ is a vital currency and how it is created, developed and sustained is the all important question. So what is fame? And I mean real fame, not the Andy Warhol fifteen […]

Make no mistake, this is the age of heightened individualism. More and more things are competing for our attention as the battle for clicks, likes and eyeballs gets stronger. And yet the more we compete as marketers and communicators, the more there is a sense of ‘so what?’ This stat dropped on my desk earlier. […]

“Nothing draws a crowd quite like a crowd” said P.T Barnum and I think about that a lot when wondering about the direction of certain campaigns I am working on. Barnum said a lot of quotable stuff and he knew a lot about the magic and mischief of capturing the public’s attention. Isn’t that at […]

There are always two ways of looking at things. The Circle https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/sep/19/the-circle-is-it-the-perfect-dating-show-for-2018-or-reality-tvs-nadiris  surely the most depressing programme to come into our homes for a decade. Or is it? Maybe it’s the cleverest, quickly uncovering the lengths we go to to be ‘liked; and how quickly we evaluate the truth. Or the lack of it. Not […]

Change always begins with the individual. That’s a fact or a cliché depending on your mood. Here’s another one. Purpose in business is the new digital, the new black or the next new coffee. Whatever, it’s more important than ever. This week the conversation about purpose has ratcheted up showing us that businesses who are […]

The Noel Edmonds campaign against Lloyds Bank, which has led the news agenda for more than a year now, has won the day for its emotional appeal and direct connection to customers, both existing and future of the bank. Moreover, it’s had the energy and creativity to keep moving the needle and drive the message […]

Dani and Jack have emerged from Love Island surrounded by stars and the promise of everlasting love. Beyond that, the promise of riches and fame await them. Initially images and soundbites will feed the media agenda, holiday destinations will offer free trips in exchange for bronzed perfection by their pool and freebies will arrive daily […]

Businesses still like to lead by function. Creative in this corner, publicity in that corner for example. But at the same time these days, it’s fashionable to be integrated. Too often I see that all of this just leads to greater dysfunction. Within the integration, each sector concentrates on their expertise and the metrics they […]

As Koke missed the second penalty and the whole of Russia erupted in a frenzy worthy of a Tolstoy epic Stanislav Cherchesov, with a face chiselled out of Russian granite, barely broke his Stakhanovite visage. It’s reported that the head coach had received a call from Putin before the match for some “encouraging words”. Steely […]

In 2008-9 Prime Minister Gordon Brown bent over backwards to recruit Alan Sugar as his government’s ‘Business Czar’, with an eye to lining up the boisterous entrepreneur as Labour’s mayoral candidate. Back then reality TV stars going into politics didn’t have quite the same stigma as it does now and in the dying years of […]

Mark spoke at the Westminster Media Forum on the 26th April 2018 ¬ the subject Next steps for tackling fake news – impact, industry response and options for policy Responding to the challenges: media literacy, responsibilities and options for policy Mark Borkowski, Founder and Creative Head, Borkowski PR My friends in media land in media […]

If Paul Dacre was listening to the “mouthpiece of the metropolitan elite” BBC on Thursday morning he might have heard Polly Tonybee lay into this “bully in chief” who has “poisoned British politics”. Would there be a more fitting leaving present for the outgoing Daily Mail editor than to have these words framed, preferably in the olde […]

No format has been more maligned than reality TV. Its obituary has been written many times. Commentators pour over declining ratings of the likes of Big Brother and X Factor. In the age of Netflix we gaze into a future where live viewing is obsolete. Yet just when it seems time to switch off the […]

The news that MI6 will be launching its first advertising campaign aimed at recruiting more women is significant not just because M’s the word. It marks a new openness for an organisation that for the best part of the last century did their utmost to persuade us they didn’t exist. Diversifying away from the old […]

Influence is a tricky one to measure. The word itself derives from the Latin influentia, meaning an influx. Influence flows out, imperceptibly, and its effects are more qualitative than quantitative. Take the Sunday Times’s big splash this week revealing findings from its investigation into Labour’s dominance on twitter during the 2017 election. According to research from Swansea […]

Forget the hastags #Bots #CambridgeAnalytica #Russian #trolls #darkforces #Socialmedia #disruption  What we see from Rudd’s downfall is that the agenda is still being set by the reporting of traditional media turbo charged by established opinion-formers.

The price of a J D Wetherspoon pint will be the cheapest within a ten minute walk of where you’re stood. Whether or not this adage is entirely true, the pub chain has created a brand of cheap-and-cheerfulness that has have left its competition in the gutter. Could this partly account for why its chairman […]

It’s lonely at the top. The modern CEO is expected to have a voice, to articulate values and, most importantly, be available. Yet there is little to prepare even the most media savvy executive for dealing with crisis once the internal support network begins to turn on you, with many boards happy to see leaders […]

With all due respect to the excellent investigative journalism that exposed the large-scale data harvesting by Cambridge Analytica  – it will not bring down Facebook. Commentators were quick to point to share price volatility and hashtag protests as indicators of doom. The social network has indeed been slow to ventilate the stench surrounding its relationship to […]

When Margaret Thatcher launched a task force to retake the Falklands from Argentine forces, her message was simple: she was defending the rights of the islanders to self-determination. In 1982, after years of domestic inertia, economic stagnation and government infighting, the British public endorsed this decisive act- and it won her a landslide reelection a […]