A guide to navigating the modern media and the new conditions of crisis and reputation management. Mark Borkowski gives a masterclass on protecting reputation in an age where attention is fleeting, truth is contested, and crises ignite in moments.

In a media climate where truth struggles to break through algorithms and volume and velocity drives the news agenda, Mark Borkowski maps the new conditions that shape reputation management.

Theatre now sits at the centre of the culture wars, where a single misstep can ignite a global storm, and Mark reveals how artists and companies can protect themselves when controversy spreads at breathtaking speed, and why courage and clarity remain essential for meaningful work.

Mark presents the hidden history of the entertainment industry and the publicists who, in promoting movies and movie stars, helped lay the groundwork for the 21st century’s major industry, based on his book.

Analysing the development of viral marketing, from PT Barnum – the original viral marketer – to the present day and dissecting the history of the circus and the sideshow to find out what it can teach us about guerrilla marketing in the 21st Century.

“If I was down to my last dollar I’d spend it on public relations” Bill Gates, Microsoft

A look at the astonishing and sometimes anarchic history of the publicity stunt, from the birth of photography to the present day, taking in everything from men hatching ostrich eggs to cars splitting in half on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile.

Delving into the dark side of celebrity, looking at how it has affected the art of being famous, the way that people engage with famous names and the reasons people become famous – and how they are devoured by the very fame they crave.

A look behind the scenes at the work that goes into being a publicist and an understanding of how to cope with the demands of celebrities, the demands of directors, the hammering of nails up noses, the splitting apart of cars mid-journey and the way that applying the accumulated knowledge, these sorts of stunts can help keep a brand’s narrative alive.

Taking a look at big business and the industrial military complex’s use of PR to control the news agenda and how their practices can be used for less secretive and controlling purposes.

Looking at the Dark Arts, propaganda at its most manipulative, secretive and potentially explosive – from the Nazi to Al Qaeda, military spy ops to the rumour factories of World War Two – with particular emphasis on how opinion can be and has been shaped to suit particular ends and how correlates with modern PR practices and brand management.

Social Media has become an enormously powerful force in the last few years, for marketing and communication, whether it is for brands or for personalities. Both need to be seen and heard in this new area and some need to be careful how they approach tools like Twitter and Facebook. 

One slip up and the online community can destroy a reputation by creating a snowballing digital poor word of mouth that the media will very likely pick up on. This looks at some of the essential pointers for achieving a useful balance.

A look back at 30 years of carefully controlled anarchy at the Edinburgh Fringe, featuring Archaos, Malcolm Hardee, Marcel Steiner and the Smallest Theatre in the World, Jim Rose, Richard de Marco and featuring any number of outrageous and extraordinary stunts and showmen from the Borkowski archive of clients.

In a world where communication is so instant that the traditional media is becoming ever more reliant on the internet to source and verify its stories, someone will always have to step up to protect brands and personalities to counter the inevitable slew of rumour that is created. PR that understands how to maintain a story is the perfect foil for the speeding up of communication. Also taking in PR #fail and what can be learned from public relations disasters.