Borkowski Weekly Media Trends 11-11-22
Mark on Hancock pt.2 | Peter Kay's Old School Recipe for Success | Qatar's Poisoned Chalice
Matt’s ‘I’m a Celeb’ [Han]cock-up pt.2
Following Mark Borkowski’s one-two combo on Matt Hancock entering the ‘I’m a Celebrity…’ Jungle last week, the nation’s media have sought further wisdom:
Mark first told the Mail:
'They paid Noel Edmonds £500,000 and that was a top booking - either Hancock is desperate for the visibility or the money... if it's the money I'd expect £350,000 - he should be very careful what he wishes for.'
Mark was then asked on BBC Radio 5 Live to talk about the excruciating ‘Ed Sheeran’ moment, telling Rachel Burden; “I’m sure he rehearsed that moment” going on to say:
“He was so awkward, he’s briefed himself to show he’s not the hideous figure he’d become.”
In-Kay-dible Power of Old School Fame
The scrabble for Glastonbury tickets usually stands head and shoulders about every other cultural event for sheer crazed demand, but this year it had competition from an unlikely source.
On Thursday, an audience of mainly Boomers and Gen Xers nationwide succeeded in crashing the O2 Priority and Virgin Media ticketing sites in their desperation to land tickets for Peter Kay’s first live show in 12 years.
An UK tour and monthly residence at the enormous O2 might seem a lot of tickets to sell for a comedian who shot to stardom over 20 years ago and who for the past five has been under-the-radar, but Kay’s popularity has much to teach us about enduring fame and knowing an audience.
In the Gen Z era, TikTok engagements and ‘purpose’ are as important to a celebrity brand as talent – looks at Zayn Malik’s Free School Meals letter today. Peter Kay is from a time of more enduring fame. If you were somebody’s favourite comedian in 2000, when media platforms, and therefore celebrities were a finite and thus less dispensable resource, there was more chance of staying that way than there would be now. What has helped is Kay’s ability to stay relatable, where some of his contemporaries’ commercial success has come at the cost of their comedy material.
The calculated risk Kay and his team have taken is to appeal to his more analogue audience through the mediums of his heyday; television advertising, push notification texts, posters that are distinctively and purposefully of that era: not a ‘dad dancing’ TikTok in sight.
The result? The biggest clamour for tickets of any stand-up comedy tour in recent memory, and a lesson that there’s still a place for fame, and fame management, from the pre-social media era.
Qatar World Cup is Becoming a PR Pandora’s Box
The world cup in Qatar is quickly turning into the PR equivalent of Pandora’s Box.
Hosting such a major event is a significant soft power exercise itself, but one that totally backfired for Qatar. From allegations, including by the US DoJ, of ‘buying’ votes during the tender to host the tournament – a subsect of a wider corruption scandal currently engulfing football’s governing body, FIFA, we then lurched to the grizzly alleged affair of stadiums built in unsafe conditions effectively using slave labour, with a death toll allegedly in the 1000s.
As the tournament itself appears on the horizon, Qatar’s ugly, regressive social policy – particularly its medieval LGBT rights- has had an unforgiving spotlight shone on it. Many are considering boycotting the tournament as we continue to embrace new ways of holding public institutions and figures to account.
Any complicity with Qatar is now seen as toxic. I’ve previously argued that public relations nous is one of Gareth Southgate’s most valuable qualities as England manager but even the class prefect managed to enrage human rights groups by claiming baselessly that the reportedly maltreated Qatar workforce were “united” behind the tournament.
Even those criticising Qatar’s human rights record find themselves in glass houses. Southgate’s former England teammate Gary Neville – reinvented as a progressive voice of reason to the extent that he has been tipped as a Labour MP- fell afoul of the nation’s harshest conscience Ian Hislop on an episode of Have I Got News for You, for criticising Qatar while still taking their bloodstained dime as a pundit.
BrewDog – no strangers to virtue signalling out of one side of their mouth while brutally profiteering out the other- then announced a campaign to donate profits from their Lost Lager to human rights charities as part of its ‘Anti-Sponsorship’ of the world cup, backed out by a series of snarky billboards. The only problem is that people are increasingly wise to brand ‘woke washing’ and particularly alert to Brewdog’s shenanigans after their greenwashing scandal.
Plenty of people pointed out that the beer barons were still showing the world cup at major fan zones – so their charitable donations (if they materialise) will be dwarfed by their profits- as well as the irony of them criticising working conditions in Qatar amid accusations that they themselves were running a “toxic and misogynistic work culture”.
Put simply: Qatar’s World Cup boondoggle has turned noxious, and anyone in its orbit risks infection.