The Independent ran an article on the rebranding of Sarah Brown and asked several people their opinion on her efforts, including myself – see the excerpt below. To read the full article, click here.
“The publicist Mark Borkowski, a prolific user of new media, believes that Sarah Brown has shown herself far more adept in this area than her husband could ever hope to be. ‘She is operating in areas where he doesn’t have any hope of generating traction,’ he says. ‘He cannot YouTube, she can. He cannot Twitter, she can. Gordon can’t generate sympathetic votes, she can, particularly from women. They’re trying to turn her into a yin to his yang.’
“Borkowski traces the origins of Sarah Brown’s strategy back to last year’s Labour Party conference in Manchester, when she stepped up to the microphone in defence of her under-attack husband. ‘Some people at the time claimed she needed to be arm-twisted into that but actually it was a bit of a toe in the water to see how it would go.’
“Despite her PR background, it will not have been easy for her. She once said of the Hobsbawm Macaulay way of working: ‘Julia goes out to lunch with people so I don’t have to.’ One industry source recalls that ‘She never really hung out with the PR crowd.’”
