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Show
Me The Money!, by Greg Tingle
Show
Me the Money!: a Guide to Fame, Fortune and Business
Success, by Australia's Agent to the Stars
Media
Man Australia's online home wouldn't be complete without
a mention of this fantastic book.
The
publicity machine himself, Max Markson, is sending
us an inscribed copy, that will put us in great step
to reach the next level of the Australian media and
PR business.
Our
book review will be released in the near future.
NEWSFLASH!
WE
HAVE THE BOOK!
Book
Review by Greg "Media Man" Tingle
Show
Me The Money
Max
Markson's, 'Show Me The Money!", is the life
story of arguably Australia's top PR man.
The
book is a must read for entrepreneurs, promotional
types, and anyone else in need of some inspiration
or motivation. It's a business story, but it's also
about life.
Like
the man himself, 'Show Me The Money' is a colourful,
straight up, humorous and easily understood. Mostly.
Max
starts out at 7 years of age, performing as a fish
for his father's aqua performance business. Boy, have
things changed since then. Max documents rock concert
promoting, pie eating, belly flop and worm eating
contests, dial-a-fruit-basket, part-time "Superman"
gigs, all the way up to selling big stories to Australia's
"current affairs" programs and promoting
business functions with guest speakers including former
Presidents and Prime Ministers.
Markson
is the manager of stars. Some of his clients have
included Bob Hawke, Ita Butrose, Linda Evangelista,
Greg Matthews, Belinda Green, Jack Brabham, Kamahl,
Pro Hart, Jane Flemming, "Aussie" Joe Bugner,
Dawn Fraser and so many more. Granted, some were stars
of sorts before making contact with Markson, but "Maxy
baby" has more than helped keep them there. Max
proudly proclaims, "I can make anyone a star",
and who's to argue! What's the name of the fellow
who wrote this very piece? "Maxy" has also
worked for the corporates in various capacities. Some
of these include 2WS, 2UE, Reebok, Sargents Pies,
Norgen-Vaaz, "The Mean Machine", Women's
Day, Channel 9, The Avillion Hotel and The Variety
Club.
At
first, the reader may get the opinion that Max is
preoccupied with money - not so. This could merely
be the work of vicious media "hounds" placing
misinformation into the living rooms around Australia.
Max explains that relationships are worth more to
him than any amount of money. Having had the pleasure
of Max's company, he does possess the personal touch.
This guy is even known to break into song during interviews!
A
little spoken about fact about Markson is that he
is a generous giver to charities. The media have largely
ignored this. Many millions have been raised by Team
Markson over the years, and he has helped keep many
charities and businesses afloat.
Like
many of us, Max has suffered some loss and misfortune
in his life. For example, he lost $10,000 on a deal
gone bad, and was left with a T-shirt for his money.
Additionally, wharfs collapsed, there's been lack
of water to dive into, and so the list of past woes
continues. Like the true champion he is, Max keeps
paddling feverishly and clinching the big deals that
other promoters can only dream of; with huge tidal
waves of success following.
Marvel
at the $500,000 Bob Hawke deal. That one broke Australia's
chequebook journalism records. It's enough to force
a journalist to be committed. And you thought Natasha
Ryan was big!
Part
of the books' appeal is that Max has turned the tables
on the media. They now pay him, rather than the media
charging "punters" and others, ridiculous
amounts of money, just to get a guernsey.
Whilst
reading the book, or even just a few chapters in;
you will likely be inspired, entertained and mesmerized,
even if its plausible to interpret the man as having
delusions of grandeur. Obviously, all promoters and
PR types need to have lashings of ego just to survive,
let alone gain the confidence of clients, and the
soon to be. There is no dispute that Max's enthusiasm
is contagious.
In
Max's own words, successful business is based on Persistence,
Enthusiasm and Focus.
Read
this book today, and you will be on your way to possessing
everything you'll ever need to be wealthy in all ways
imaginable.
Read
version 2, by Greg Tingle and Dane Crandon
Media
Man Australia "Putting your name out there!"
Copyright
© 2003 Media Man Australia
MORE
INFO
Max
Markson says...The three pillars on which I believe
any business success is based are: Persistence, Enthusiasm
and Focus. (Credit:
Markson Sparks! website)
In the course of his long, varied and colourful career,
publicity supremo Max Markson has always stood out
from the herd. His secrets? A nose for a good story.
An eye for the main chance. A sure-fire ability to
capture the public's imagination. A thorough understanding
of the tools a successful business needs to consistently
win new clients and keep them.
His
is the story of the ultimate self-made man. As a schoolboy
Max was promoting some of the hottest bands in the
country - using a telephone box as an office. Some
thirty years later he is Australia's best-known publicist,
charity fund-raiser and agent to the stars.
He
made Jane Flemming a calendar girl, found Greg Matthews
a new head of hair, put Ita Buttrose and Linda Evangelista
on a treadmill, gave new meaning to Kevin Costner's
Waterworld and brokered Australia's biggest ever chequebook
journalism deal.
Show
Me the Money! is essential for budding entrepreneurs,
fund-raisers, publicity seekers - all those looking
to change their image and make a difference. It's
the wonderfully funny tale of a young Englishman who
fell on his feet in Sydney in the 1970s, and went
on to represent some of Australia's most famous sons
and daughters.
www.penguin.com.au
Be
certain to visit our online
shop for a range of great books and other goods
and services.
Media
Man Australia interview with Max Markson - 2nd July
2003
Sports-Men
Behaving Badly with Amanda Smith (ABC Radio National)
- 16th June 2000 (Credit
ABC)
Summary:
Do
athletes learn bullying, anti-social behaviour though
sport? And how might sportspeople manage the contradiction
that's inherent in their lives - where the kind of
aggressive behaviour that they're rewarded for on
the field can get them into trouble off the field?
This is the starting point for a study which sociologist
MITCHELL DEAN is doing into reforming the behaviour
of professional rugby league players.
Athlete
manager and PR man MAX MARKSON is a master at turning
negative publicity into positive publicity, and making
money out of it. So what spin would he be putting
on this week's allegations of sexual harassment against
cricketer Shane Warne, if he were Warne's manager?
Plus,
JOHN CLARKE, creator, writer and star of the TV series
"The Games" - the second series of which
begins on Monday night - talks about sport as a subject
for satire, and making a farce of the Olympic Games.
Details
or Transcript:
THEME
Amanda
Smith: On The Sports Factor this week, spinning the
image of sports-men who behave badly.
Also,
do athletes learn bullying, anti-social behaviour
through sport? And does sport perpetuate violence
in our society? Or does it, rather, civilise violence?
Those are some questions I'll be raising shortly with
sociologist Mitchell Dean.
Plus,
coming up, John Clarke, creator, writer and star of
the TV show "The Games", on taking sport
as a subject for satire. And a question I've long
wanted to put to him:
MUSIC
Amanda
Smith: Has anyone ever told you you look rather like
Kevan Gosper?
John
Clarke: Yes, it's funny you should say that. Mrs Gosper
has often made that remark.
MUSIC
Amanda
Smith: And more with John Clarke on making a farce
of the Olympic Games, later in the program.
Well,
the off-field behaviour of some of our high profile
footballers and cricketers continues to attract newspaper
headlines. It's a kind of ongoing theme about exposing
the out-of-hours misdemeanours, or alleged misdemeanours,
of those sportspeople whose actions we admire so much
on the field. In his years as a manager of athletes
and celebrities, Max Markson has had to massage the
image of a few errant individuals, in addition to
drumming up new ways of turning his athletes into
household names. It's something that Max Markson learnt
at a young age from his father, who ran "the
Leon Markson Aquashow" in England, and who always
said that "It's stunts wot make a good show".
Max
Markson: I think to get attention for anybody or anything,
you have to make them laugh, and make them sit up
and notice you. And I think one of the big examples,
when I look back at my career and some of the things
I've done, I mean The Golden Girls Calendar, which
we did with Jane Flemming, at that time it was a whole
new things for athletes to show their bodies, as it
were.
Amanda
Smith: And look what you've started!
Max
Markson: (laughs) Yes, now everybody takes their clothes
off; any excuse for a calendar or book!
Amanda
Smith: Well over the years you've managed and promoted
a raft of sportspeople, from Dawn Fraser in her post-swimming
career, as you mentioned, Jane Flemming and her Golden
Girls Calendar, through to organising a new head of
hair for cricketers Greg Matthews and for Graham Gooch.
How though, and why, did you get into the personal
management of athletes?
Max
Markson: The first time I got involved was 1986, when
one of our clients was sponsoring the then Mean Machine,
Neil Brooks, Matthew Renshaw, Mark Stockwell and Greg
Fasala and it's prior to the Commonwealth Games in
Edinburgh. They won gold medals; I told them they've
got to shave their heads, and so they brought the
hair back and we auctioned the hair off for charity.
And they asked me if I'd manage them, we were doing
the PR for them, so I said, "Sure; and so there's
four of you, one of me, we'll split it all 20% each."
And so that's how I started taking 20% when I managed
people. The first thing we do, we've got a TV commercial
for them, white and brown bread ("I'm a white
and brown fan, that's what I am") and they had
to shave their heads again, which Brooksey didn't
want to do at all. Said, "No, no, no, I'm growing
my hair back". I said, "Look, for ten grand,"
(you know, because we're getting 50 grand for the
commercials) I said, "shave your head".
And all the other guys wanted to do it. And I even
offered to shave my head; my wife didn't want to know
about it. And that's how it came about. And then Greg
Matthews approached me and asked me if I'd represent
him. Once I was looking after Greg, I rang up Jeff
Fenech who I was mates with, and said, "Do you
want me to manage you?" he said, "Yes, sure."
And he hung up. And then I was doing work for Reebok,
and they recommended Wally Masur, the tennis player
to come to me; I started looking after him, and I
picked up Andrew Lloyd after the Commonwealth Games
in 1990, then Jane Flemming, Duncan Armstrong, it's
just grown.
Amanda
Smith: Well aside from organising endorsements and
appearances and publicity with the athletes you manage,
how much do you need to get involved in their private
lives and in managing dysfunctions in their private
lives?
Max
Markson: Look I think that's very important from just
being part of their circle of friends and advisers
to help them when their private life suddenly becomes
public, you have to handle the public image of it,
and it's not always bad. I mean sometimes someone's
getting married or having a baby, and I obviously
see a commercial avenue there and I'll try and sell
the story to a magazine or to a TV show so at least
they're earning some money from this, and also when
there's something bad happens, you can always have
an exclusive deal. I mean you talk about the current
situation with Shane Warne for instance, something's
happened in England, this woman sold her story to
a newspaper, he said there's two sides to the story
and he hasn't said a word yet. Now if I was managing
him, which I'm not, but if I was, I'd be going and
trying to get a quarter of a million dollars for him
to do his side of the story and make him come out
smelling like roses.
Amanda
Smith: Well it seems to me that you've almost always
been able to turn a bad news story about one of your
athletes into an opportunity for publicity and/or
moneymaking. For example a few years ago the cricketer
Greg Matthews got caught up in rumours in the UK that
he was having a fling with Sophie Rhys-Jones, at that
time she was Prince Edward's new girlfriend. Tell
us what you did with that.
Max
Markson: Well he didn't have an affair with Sophie
Rhys-Jones, had never even met her, and on the tour
that it was supposed to have happened, he wasn't even
in England. So I sold the story the other way: I said,
"I didn't have an affair with Sophie Rhys-Jones",
and we got $20,000 from Woman's Day for not doing
the story.
Amanda
Smith: Well you certainly had to media manage the
odd swimmer and cricketer who has got themselves involved
in things like bar-room brawls and so forth; how do
you do the damage control? What are your priorities
and strategies when, say, one of your sportspeople
gets up to no good?
Max
Markson: Talk to them first of all to find out what's
actually happened; and if there's something which
is negative, then obviously try and make them look
good out of it, either you come out and do a straightforward
apology, or you come out and defend yourself vigorously,
or you lie low and don't say a word, go into hiding.
But normally you come out and you handle the media,
because if you don't come out and talk to the media,
it just grows and grows, and the media keep hounding
you and the story keeps running and running. If you
can nip it in the bud straight away, the story goes
away. And then you just get the athlete back on the
field, doing what they do best. And I've just said
about Shane Warne, but I mean all Shane's got to do
is go back and take wickets, and we'll all forget
about what's happened in the last week or two, we'll
just be saying, "Gee, what a great cricketer
he is".
Amanda
Smith: Unless of course it comes out that those allegations
are indeed true, surely?
Max
Markson: It wouldn't matter.
Amanda
Smith: Why not?
Max
Markson: Because we forget about it. We've forgotten
about the bribery scandal, we've forgotten about him
walking out when the Madame Tussaud situation when
they said he was too fat and all that. We forget about
this. You know, he's Australia's greatest ever test
wicket taker. That's all we care about. And as soon
as somebody does something ... all the fuss over the
Olympics at the moment; as soon as that opening ceremony
and somebody lights the flame, and Cathy Freeman wins
the 400 metres or Kieran Perkins wins the 1500 metres,
or Suzie O'Neill, Ian Thorpe win medals, we'll forget
about all the hassle we had with getting the tickets,
we'll love it.
Amanda
Smith: Is there a line over which you wouldn't walk
though, Max? I'm wondering what your kind of, I guess,
ethical boundaries are when it comes to spinning the
image of someone you're representing.
Max
Markson: Look, it's got to be within the law. I mean
if someone's done a criminal action I don't really
want to try and defend them, or be involved in terms
of doing something illegal; I'd never do anything
illegal. But as far as protecting my athletes, supporting
my athletes and being there for them, yes, that's
what a manager's about.
Amanda
Smith: I was interested to find out recently that
Gustavo Kuerten, the Brazilian tennis player who won
the French Open Men's Singles title last weekend,
he has a dedicated, permanent public relations person
in his entourage, I think he's the only player on
the circuit to have his own personal PR manager. Is
that the way things are going, that athletes of that
calibre these days need full-time image management?
Max
Markson: But of course. If Pat Cash would have had
that, he'd probably be worth a lot more money now,
because think of some of the instances where he had
bad media management, or where he lost his temper
over something. If he would have had a PR person there,
that wouldn't have happened. You've got to look at
some of the superstar athletes, are superstars, and
they're the same as the superstars of film. I mean
Tom Cruise doesn't go anywhere without his personal
publicist, it's just part of the game, it's where
we're going. In this country, no, we haven't got athletes
of that nature unless you look at, say, Greg Norman,
or Pat Rafter perhaps. But I mean definitely, if you've
got an athlete who is generating millions of dollars,
and I'm talking five, ten, fifteen, twenty million
dollars a year in endorsements, then you've got to
protect; and they're doing them for companies that
are worth billions of dollars. I mean, if I'm Nike
and I'm giving Tiger Woods $50-million a year, hey,
it's worth it to me to spend 50-grand a year having
one person dedicated to looking after Tiger Woods
full time PR-wise, just to handle the media, to make
sure that he doesn't step out of line or do something
wrong. Why wouldn't you? It's smart business.
Amanda
Smith: If an athlete of yours, Max, gets involved
in some sort of scandal or allegations of the nature
of what's going on with Shane Warne at the moment,
how much are you kind of meat-in-the-sandwich between
the athlete, the media and also their sponsors, who
want a clean image in their athlete?
Max
Markson: I don't think it's meat-in-the-sandwich,
you just fix it; if there's a problem, you fix it.
You go and talk to the athlete, you talk to the sponsors,
you talk to the media, and you make the whole exercise
clean, if you like, or you give the answers. Now if
you're a sponsor who's sponsoring an athlete who's
continue getting into trouble, or continually controversial,
then you'd be looking at your contract and saying,
"Can I get out of this contract?" or you're
saying, "Is that the sort of image we want?"
and if it is, then you keep going with it. If you
don't, then you pull the pin on the athlete. And I've
had that happen to me before, with athletes. I mean,
never for bad reasons, I've had it for injury but
never for somebody who's done something wrong. A lot
of the athletes I look after, I'm very fortunate,
are very clean skinned. And I look after Michael Bevan
the cricketer, Jane Flemming, track and field athlete,
and now commentator, Hayley Lewis back in the Olympic
team, all of them fantastic images, never had an iota
of problems around them. It's not always every high
profile athlete gets into trouble.
Amanda
Smith: No, of course not. But often controversy is
good in terms of image-making?
Max
Markson: Depends on the product. If you're a Pepsi
Max or Coca Cola and you want to have a bit of an
edge, or street cred or mambo, then maybe you want
to have a personality who's a bit on the edge. Or
if you're a snack food, like a McDonald's or KFC,
you probably want to have a really clean image, you
don't want to go anywhere near controversy. You might
be a product like a packet of crisps, and you want
to have again, that sort of edge image, so sure, you
might like to have a Leyton Hewitt who might be a
little bit controversial.
Amanda
Smith: And you, I imagine Max, would subscribe to
Oscar Wilde's line about there being only one thing
worse than people talking about you?
Max
Markson: Yes, not talking about you, absolutely. And
Groucho Marx, any publicity's good publicity, you
know.
Amanda
Smith: Max Markson, athlete and celebrity manager,
PR and promotions man. And Max has a book coming out
next month, about his life and times in this business,
called "Show Me the Money", a most appropriate
title for the bloke they call "Mr Twenty Percent".
Well,
is sport a breeding ground for anti-social behaviour?
Mitchell Dean is a sociologist who's embarking on
a study into reforming the behaviour of professional
Rugby League players. And a major issue, as he sees
it, is the contradiction between the kind of behaviour
that's expected of sportpeople on the field, and the
behaviour that's expected of them off the field. As
Mitchell Dean put it, on the football or cricket ground,
players are required to be battle-soldiers, off it,
they're supposed to be in the diplomatic corps.
Mitchell
Dean: Yes, it seems to me that the modern professional
sportsman has to develop two rather different sets
of capacities, as you say. Firstly, aggression and
fierce competitiveness within the framework of the
rules on the field, not a slavish following of the
rules, because you won't win if you slavishly follow
the rules, but you need to stretch the rules to their
limit, without being penalised. And there's that kind
of aggression, fierce competition on the field. Off
the field, the professional sportsmen, and sportswomen
increasingly, are expected to be exemplary individuals,
their public conduct is scrutinised, their statements
are scrutinised, they're seen to me, in a sense, ambassadors
for the game, or for their sponsors, there's an enormous
amount of money, multinational capital invested in
them, and so on. And it's that contradiction that
I started from.
Amanda
Smith: So how might individual sportspeople best understand
and manage the contradictions that are inherent in
their lives then, as athletes, as celebrities, and
as citizens?
Mitchell
Dean: I think that as with most social things, most
things in society, that we're not necessarily born
with the skills to cope with these situations. So
it's very difficult for an individual to, you know,
you have to be an extraordinary individual to cope
with these rather different sets of demands upon you.
And I think that in this period of transition of Australian
sport, we haven't seen the sort of requisite development
of an infrastructure that places the individual within
a wider context. So the clubs, sporting administrators
and so on, are trying to find ways of developing a
structure, but I don't think it's quite there yet.
So I suppose my overall sense, and this is really
pre-judging my own research, is that we need to look
at the professional and personal development, the
life skills outside of sport, of the sportsmen. We
need to look at systems of mentorship as well.
Amanda
Smith: But what about the argument that men in particular,
learn a bullying, aggressive kind of behaviour through
sport, that then impacts on their behaviour beyond
sport. I mean you could see the allegations of sexual
harassment that have been made against Shane Warne
in England as a potential example of this.
Mitchell
Dean: Yes. I think that there is a sense in which
you could say sport perpetuates a kind of aggressive
behaviour off the field, but we all have to, in our
social lives, we all have to engage in rather different
roles: in the workplace, as a parent, and so on. And
there are different capacities that are required.
I don't think it's beyond human beings to be able
to juggle those capacities under the right circumstances,
and if you like, with the right training in life skills
and so on. To me, that relates to, if you like, the
broader question of whether sport is a civilising
of aggression, masculine aggression, masculinity,
or whether it perpetuates some of its worst forms.
Amanda
Smith: And what do you think?
Mitchell
Dean: I think that compared to, say, pre-modern societies,
and the forms of sport that were associated with them,
that we live in a very civilised, regulated society,
in which most of us live fairly mundane, peaceful,
but somewhat routine lives, and in which sport has
become a professional activity that's restricted to
a few specialists; it's played under certain conditions,
so that aggression is being, if you like, regulated
there.
Amanda
Smith: And you believe that sport has actually played
a part in enabling the development of liberal democracies,
Mitchell? How so?
Mitchell
Dean: Well I think if you compare the types of, say,
football we have, to medieval folk forms of football,
which were practised on a Shrove Tuesday or another
festival day, involved unlimited players, some of
which were on horseback, using all sorts of branches
and so on to beat each other with, which were not
played on a field, which involved the death of people,
and bystanders, compare that to modern professional
games of football, and you see that over the long
term, you can't help but think that professional sports
is a part of a kind of civilising process, and the
majority of us are spectators. And we get our kicks,
if you like, we get our quest for excitement, our
desire to participate in risky behaviours in this
kind of vicarious way.
Amanda
Smith: And yet that kind of civilising aspect that
you talk about with folk football, that has sort of
fallen apart over the last ten years or so, you'd
have to say around British soccer for example, with
the hooliganism that surrounds the game, which in
a way harks back to the earlier forms of folk football
that did involve those large numbers of people out
in the streets often behaving in a pretty aggro way.
Mitchell
Dean: It does, and there's an old sort of idea about
soccer, that because of the deferral of excitement
on the field, that it's open to that type of football
hooliganism. And I do think soccer has a particular
kind of development, that it's obviously aristocratic
in origin, in the sense that it requires a lot of
self denial, that what you have with the restriction
on the use of the hands, you have these very limited
moments of ecstasy in an otherwise rather mundane
and dull kind of game, which gives plenty of opportunities,
particularly when it's connected to I suppose working
class groups of spectators, for that semi-Fascist
kind of behaviour on the terraces, and in the streets,
which we see with the English football, almost professional
football hooligans, aren't they?
Amanda
Smith: Indeed. Mitchell Dean, who's head of the Department
of Sociology at Macquarie University.
Now
a professional hooligan of another, altogether more
charming kind, is John Clarke, co-writer and co-star
of the ABC-TV show "The Games". In its first
series, this spoof on the organisation behind the
Olympic Games, produced some memorable, farcical,
yet strangely believable moments.
Read
version 2 by Greg Tingle and Dane Crandon
The
Great Aussie Promoters, by Greg Tingle
The
Great Yankee Promoters, by Greg Tingle
Interview
- Max Markson
Interview
- Talking Television with Greg Tingle
Media
Man Australia: Profiles
Media
Man Australia: Media Personalities
Markson
Sparks! official website
Profiles
Max
Markson
Shane
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