Feejee Mermaid is a 
company,
dedicated to the creation of Live Events, PR Stunts and Entertainment.
After countless productions over several decades, drawing upon the heritage of showmen and stuntsters of the past, Feejee Mermaid is the product of many years of inspiration and experience.
WHO IS FEEJEE MERMAID?
James Lovell
Feejee Mermaid’s Creative Director is James Lovell .
James has worked with Mark Borkowski in various guises since 1989. In the mid-90s he created The Ministry of Fun, producing street theatre and stage shows for many well-known brands and titles, activating some of the UK’s most memorable PR stunts and experiential/guerrilla campaigns, breaking several world records … and forming the UK’s only professional Santa School.
In 2022, he and Borkowski teamed up permanently to co-found Feejee Mermaid. Their aim? To create work that thrills audiences, turbo-charges brand messages and puts a smile back on the news agenda.
Borkowski
Borkowski has been generating PR and stunts since the 1980s.
Co-Founder Mark Borkowski has been described by Jeremy Paxman as “the proud inheritor of the P.T. Barnum tradition of publicity”. The Guardian has recognised him for “being responsible for a sizeable chunk of most days’ newspapers.” And PR Week recently called him “one of the few PR people whose reputation reaches the outside world”, adding “he is credited with creating a discipline –‘Theatre of Publicity’ – with his brilliant publicity stunts.”
Born in showbusiness, Borkowski’s philosophy has always been informed and built upon the Stuntsters of Hollywood’s Golden Age. With the creation of Feejee Mermaid, the company is actively re-visiting that world.
HERITAGE
Since the days of the great Phineas Taylor Barnum, PR Stunts and improperganda have claimed attention, captured column inches and made news.
In 1842, a mummified creature was advertised as a real mermaid and unveiled at P.T. Barnum’s American Museum in New York. It was of course hoax, nothing more than the top half of a monkey sewn onto the bottom half of a fish. But still the people came to see … the Feejee Mermaid!
After Barnum, the world enjoyed the great Hollywood publicist Harry Reichenbach and later Jim Moran (“It’s a sad day for American capitalism when a man can’t fly a midget on a kite over Central Park.“) Both knew how to tell stories. And both fully understood one thing: PR stunts are about Entertainment.
In the 1980s, Mark Borkowski began taking stunts into new areas of public life, bringing the Arts and Consumer worlds together, with stunts ranging from gift wrapping a helicopter to filling Selfridges with 500-naked people.
Today, the world’s appetite for PR stunts is as big as ever. Drawing upon the spirit and expertise of the past, Feejee Mermaid is dedicated to creating stories that intrigue, entertain and endure … bringing the craft of the stuntster into the 21st Century.
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PT BARNUM
(1810-1891) 19th Century Purveyor of Stunts, Ballyhoo and the Inventor of Experiential Marketing
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HARRY REICHENBACH
(1882-1931) Legendary US Press Agent and Hollywood Publicist
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JIM MORAN
(1908-1999) 20th Century Supreme Master of the Publicity Stunt
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MARK BORKOWSKI
(Born 1959) Doyen of the Stunt, creating ground-breaking actions for over four decades
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FEEJEE MERMAID
(Founded 2022)
WHAT CAN FEEJEE MERMAID DO FOR YOU?
Feejee Mermaid has an array of talents at its disposal, with direct access to creatives, performers, set-builders, locations, costumes, props, AV, tech, drones … and pretty much anything else.
Tell us what you need and we’ll do the rest:
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Provide Concepts and Ideas
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Manage Discovery and Costs
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Produce the Activation
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Create Content
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Borkowski – PR Support
OUR WORK
Here’s a selection of missions reaching back to the 1980s:
Click to enlarge
BIG CHRISTMAS PRESS SHOW
TWEEDY AT #10
WOMAD
BELVOIR FARM – BRING THE COUNTRYSIDE
VOTING IS HOT AS F*CK
REDCOAT ACADEMY – STREET THEATRE
KPN “PIECE OF MY SOUL”
BUTLIN’S CHRISTMAS
BELVOIR FARM – CHRISTMAS DONE PROPERLY
DESTROY ALL BAD ART
STAYSURE OVER 50s
PITZHANGER ROBOTS
CIRCUS BERLIN
SKYDIAMOND
FALSE TEETH IN A PORK PIE
ALOHA PRIVACY STICKERS
HORIZON TECHNOLOGIES
PETSURE GAMES
MONOPOLY LIFESIZED
SANTA SCHOOL
SAVE THE CIRCUS
NUREYEV MOVIE PREMIERE
SPENCER TUNICK
UP
CHOCOLATE BILLBOARD
HARRODS WRAP
SELFRIDGES VEGAS POKER
CUSTARD PIES
BALLET GIRLS
MARILYN AT THE BARBICAN
RIVER THAMES DOUBLE WIREWALK
fcuk LAUNCH
ACTION MAN BEATS OLYMPIAN
BOTTLED BRITVIC GIRL
ORANJEBOOM BILLBOARD
INVISIBLE MAN
JONGLEURS COMEDY CLUB
ARCHAOS – FULL TILT
CABBAGE PATCH KIDS
SEX SYMBOL SINDY
TREASURE ISLAND PARROTS
GIANT PAPER BOAT
DEEP SEA JIVERS
OUR AIM
The Feejee Mermaid originally played with a 19th Century audience fascinated by the super-natural. Was it real? Was it not? The story excited people and created debate. It entertained them.
If you make people smile then they will remember you. Our aim is to entertain your audiences; to turbo-charge brand messaging and put a smile back on the face of today’s media landscape.
As P.T. Barnum once said: “Every crowd has a silver lining”. Let us help you uncover it.
PR
Feejee Mermaid maintains a strong association with Borkowski PR, whose Consumer, Corporate, Crisis and Arts Teams are on-hand to support all its stunt activities.
“Borkowski has done more than anyone to rehabilitate and celebrate the craft of the publicist by recognising the sophisticated use of psychology and visual communication.”
(Richard Bailey, Editor of PR Place)
BORKOWSKI.CO.UK
