Out of all the guest lectures I have attended at university this was one of my favourites. Mark Borkowski - a 'biggie' in the PR world, the UK's leading creative publicist - visited us PR students at Greenwich to talk to us about his notable success and career in public relations.
Borkowski has handled PR for some of the biggest names in the business, including Eddie Izzard, Graham Norton, Joan Rivers, Cliff Richard, Shirley Bassey, Cirque du Soleil and the Jackson trio. If that isn't enough, he is the founder of one of the most reputable PR companies in the UK (Borkowski PR), has written two books on publicity stunts as related to public relations and currently writes a column for The Guardian Online. He is most renowned for his 'Bring Back Wispa' campaign for Cadbury, which he told us all about. The campaign won a PR Week Award for digital innovation and was judged overall as 'Best Campaign of the Year'. It showed the growing power of social media.
We all remember the Wispa chocolate bar - it was mine and my brother's favourite as children. I remember I would wonder what ever happened to it... where had it gone?
I remember seeing Wispa during its comeback when I noticed it stocked on the shelves of my local off-license. The feeling of nostalgia got the better of me and I brought bars of it home for the family (just in case it left us again!). Before the lecture I did a bit of background research on Mark Borkowski before his lecture just to get a better idea of who he was and what he was known for. I couldn't believe it when I read he was the one who brought back Wispa.
"What PR does best is understand the power of the crowd, but social media means the crowd can now express its own views," Borkowski said. "Companies need to learn to love the 'haters' as it sharpens your wit; whilst management may wish to ignore or neutralise 'haters', it is impossible in a social media age."He also went on to question whether the story is more interesting than the truth; a question I am constantly asking myself when I see certain broadcast stories. He then went on to show us news stories that had made the front page but were false (all red tops of course), but nevertheless sold the newspaper.
An inspiring talk on communicating for the 'now economy'. I hope we can get him to come back to the university for another talk next year.
Twitter: @MarkBorkowski
