Mark My Words

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 […]

A week on, and I am still thinking about that bizarre, telling moment: JD Vance standing beside Donald Trump as Volodymyr Zelensky, a wartime leader, was questioned, not about war, democracy, or geopolitics, but about why he wasn’t wearing a suit.It was a question that should have been inconsequential. Instead, it became a symbol of […]

Question of the day: Can Meghan Markle teach us something about PR? Is Meghan the undisputed empress of reinvention, or merely the architect of strategic bewilderment? One minute, she’s launching American Riviera Orchard, a name dripping with sun-dappled exclusivity. The next, she’s pivoting to As Ever, a brand so nebulous it could be selling artisanal […]

Topic of the week the inaugural Musk salute. Oh, the delicious irony of it all. The world’s richest attention seeker has finally jumped the shark, and we’re all pretending to be shocked. About as shocking as a celebrity’s “candid” paparazzi shot. Pure performance, darling, and not even a good one.Look, I’ve spent decades watching the […]

Ah, the Grammys—where music is an afterthought, and the real winners are those who can manufacture the most viral hysteria. And this year’s undisputed champion? Bianca Censori, Kanye West’s latest human installation piece, who arrived cloaked in fur only to dramatically shed it, revealing… well, almost nothing. Should the City of Coventry be filing a […]

Do we have a blind spot? Is there a delusion we can’t see? When Trump won in 2016, and Brexit divided the nation, the “experts” didn’t pause to question what they missed. Instead, they cocooned themselves in an echo chamber, stuck in a loop talking about interference and manipulation. Looking back, they were utterly disconnected […]

Let’s discuss Gregg Wallace and his white-van-man alter ego. A man who has turned his once reliable MasterChef charm into a full-blown case study in professional implosion. Watching him navigate his downfall has been like observing a soufflé collapse in slow motion: utterly predictable, yet still oddly fascinating.There are issues aplenty arising from the allegations levelled against […]

As a showbiz publicist, I know about the Faustian pact between famous people and the public. Stars think they understand it, but they really don’t.As the worldwide tributes continue, the tragic death of Liam Payne at the cruel age of just 31 has shaken the foundations of how we perceive celebrity and fame. As a publicist […]

A fortnight ago Rishi Sunak apologised for the damage he did to the credibility of popular trainer brand Adidas Sambas after wearing a pair in a podcast interview, during one of his infinite attempts to appear down with the kids.Adidas were presumably still reeling from the reputation damage caused by a stuffy right wing politician […]

I’ve been asked by a few people, including the The Guardian, for a communications perspective on reports that Elon Musk’s Barnum-esque page pageantry is having a negative impact on Tesla’s sales and share price. A charismatic figurehead is critical to effectively communicating and ultimately adding value to a business. Still, Musk risks becoming a cautionary […]

I’ve been asked by a few people, including the The Guardian, for a communications perspective on reports that Elon Musk’s Barnum-esque page esque pageantry is having a negative impact on Tesla’s sales and share price.  A charismatic figurehead is critical to effectively communicating and ultimately adding value to a business. Still, Musk risks becoming a cautionary tale about […]

A few weeks ago in our Media Trends newsletter we discussed Liz Truss’ attempt to crack America by hitching her wagon to the Trumpist juggernaut and concluded: “…she has been assiduous in telling her new target audience exactly what they want to hear. In the braying arena of the American culture wars, any conscript willing […]

I’m honoured once again to have been included in the PRWeek hashtag#powerbook2024 alongside illustrious industry humans I hold in high regard James Herring Sarah James James Gordon-MacIntosh Warren Johnson Graham Goodkind Julian Vogel Julian Henry Gary Farrow Alan Edwards Fenella Grey Farzana Baduel Paul Charles Fergus Lawlor Jo Carr plus my wonderful MD Lucie SpecialeOne […]

The push for a ‘Smartphone-free childhood’ is the latest chapter in an evolving narrative that the overwhelming avalanche and decreasing reliability of the information we are presented daily is not just distracting us but harming our mental health and not simply curtailing our attention spans but affecting our cognitive abilities. Contemporary media channels are saturated with […]