Bell Pottinger Group

Bell Pottinger Group plc

Type	Public limited company
Industry	Communications
Founded	1998 (London)
Key people	Kevin Murray (Chairman)[1] Paul Bell (Chief Executive)[2]
Services	Public relations
Revenue	£137.7 million (2010)[3]
Employees	411 (2008)
Parent	Chime Communications
Subsidiaries	Pelham Bell Pottinger
Website	bell-pottinger.co.uk

Bell Pottinger Group plc (informally Bell Pottinger) is a multinational public relations and marketing company based in London, United Kingdom and a wholly owned subsidiary of Chime Communications plc. It is the largest UK-based public relations consultancy measured by 2010 fee income.^[3]

Bell Pottinger offers services such as lobbying, speech writing, search engine optimisation and "sorting" Wikipedia articles^[4] to clients including companies, governments and high net worth individuals.^[5] In December 2011 it came under public scrutiny after managers were secretly recorded talking to fake representatives of the Uzbek government ^[6] and abusing Wikipedia by removing negative information and replacing it with positive spin.^[7][8]

Lord Bell, who advised Margaret Thatcher on media matters when she was British Prime Minister, is a co-founder of Bell Pottinger and Chairman of its parent company, Chime Communications.^[9]

Contents 1 History 2 Operations 3 Criticism 4 Clients 5 References 6 External links

History

In 1998, Lowe Bell was renamed the Bell Pottinger Group.^[10] In 2000 the Bell Pottinger Group acquired Harvard Public Relations and QBO, which was renamed Bell Pottinger Public Relations.^[11][12] In 2001 Bell Pottinger acquired MMK in Germany and also The Smart Company, which was merged into Corporate Citizenship when the Group acquired it in 2007.^[13][14] In 2003 Resonate, a consumer public relations company was set up.^[15] In 2004 Bell Pottinger Communications USA was launched and in 2005 Bell Pottinger Middle East was launched with offices in Bahrain in 2009.^[16][17] In 2009 Bell Pottinger Change & Internal Communications was launched and Ptarmigan in Leeds was acquired by the Bell Pottinger Group.^[18][19]

The Bell Pottinger Group has been ranked number one for the past four years in both the PRWeek and Marketing magazine league tables.^[20][21]

Operations

Bell Pottinger Group consists of 20 agencies, employs over 450 people worldwide and has UK offices in London, Cardiff, Macclesfield, Leeds and Liverpool.^[22]

Internationally, Bell Pottinger has offices in Bahrain, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Hamburg, Munich, Brussels, Geneva, Boston, New York and Washington, D.C..^[11]

Bell Pottinger offers consumer, corporate and financial, healthcare, technology, industrial, public affairs, public sector, corporate social responsibility, internal communication, crisis and issues management services.^[23]

Bell Pottinger’s major brands include Good Relations, Harvard, Insight, Resonate, MMK, Corporate Citizenship, Ptarmigan Bell Pottinger and Pelham Bell Pottinger.^{[19][24][25][26]} Bell Pottinger donated £11,900 to the Conservative Party in the twelve months to September 2011.^[27]

Criticism

On 5 December 2011, the British national newspaper The Independent ran a front page story based on covert filming by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism which the paper claimed revealed executives from Bell Pottinger boasting of ways in which they burnished the reputations of countries accused of human rights violations.^[5] Posing as representatives of a fake investment body linked to the Uzbekistan government, the journalists had filmed a presentation at which Bell Pottinger executives explained techniques used on behalf of their clients. At one point Tim Collins of Bell Pottinger, who has close connections with Prime Minister David Cameron, Edward Llewellyn, and Steve Hilton, had referred to "...dark arts".^[28]

It was also reported that senior executives at Bell Pottinger told the undercover reporters that they had written a key speech given by the Sri Lankan President to the United Nations, in which he had described military action against Tamil Tiger separatists as "humanitarian".^[29][30] During a meeting with reporters, David Wilson, the chairman of Bell Pottinger Public Relations, had stated that:

We had a team working in the President's office. We wrote the President's speech to the UN last year which was very well received... it went a long way to taking the country where it needed to go,^[29]

One of the techniques specifically mentioned by Collins was the use of search engine optimization to alter Google results.^[31] He said:

And where we want to get to – and this will take time, this is where David's team are magical – is you get to the point where even if they type in 'Uzbek child labour' or 'Uzbek human rights violation', some of the first results that come up are sites talking about what you guys are doing to address and improve that, not just the critical voices saying how terrible this all is.^[28]

In the recording the executives claimed to have access to or relationships with numerous senior British politicans, including Prime Minister David Cameron; the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne; David Cameron's Director of Strategy, Steve Hilton; James Arbuthnot (chair of the Defence Select Committee), and MP Rory Stewart.^[28]

Collins also claimed that Bell Pottinger had been involved in David Cameron raising a matter with the Chinese government on behalf of a Bell Pottinger client, saying:

…Just as a final example just for you... I'm not saying we can always do this but just as an example of what we can sometimes do. Three weeks ago, we were rung up at 2.30 on a Friday afternoon by one of our clients, Dyson... They rang up and they said look, we've got a huge issue, and that is that a lot of our products are being completely ripped off in China, to the point where they're not just completely duplicating the product... (The) Chinese government won't take it seriously, it's half past two on a Friday afternoon. On Saturday, the Chinese Prime Minister is coming in for a UK visit – can you please get the UK to raise it?...And I'm pleased to say that on the Saturday, David Cameron raised it with the Chinese Prime Minister and showed him the photos of the products. I'm not saying we can do that all the time but that is an illustration of what, if you have the right message – David Cameron, yes he was doing it for Dyson, yes he was doing it because we asked him to do it, he was doing this also because he thought this was also in the UK wider national interest. This was something where there would be a UK proper interest. But in terms of very fast turnaround and getting things done right at the top of government, if you've got the right message, yes, we can do it.^[28]

The allegations of Bell Pottinger directly influencing the British Prime Minister and other senior Government figures on behalf of private sector clients led to calls from the opposition Labour Party for the Cabinet secretary Sir Gus O'Donnell to launch an investigation, and from The Alliance for Lobbying Transparency for the immediate introduction of a statutory register of lobbyists.^[32][33]

On 8 December 2011, the UK national newspaper The Daily Telegraph claimed that some Wikipedia user accounts allegedly linked to Bell Pottinger had been suspended. Its report stated that "Further claims published in the Independent today suggested that the company made hundreds of alterations to Wikipedia entries about its clients in the last year, some of them adding favourable comments and others removing negative comments. Alterations were said to have been made by a user – traced to a Bell Pottinger computer – who used the pseudonym "Biggleswiki".^[34] Among the articles editied by "Biggleswiki" was the Wikipedia entry for Dahabshiil,^[35] a funds transfer firm. On the same day, The Independent reported that the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, had described Bell Pottinger as "ethically blind", after it had admitted altering Wikipedia pages relating to its clients.^[36]

On 9 December 2011, The Independent published further allegations, including that Bell Pottinger had targeted the Wikipedia entry of Gordon Brown's sister-in-law, the environmental campaigner Clare Rewcastle Brown and the South African arms manufacturer the Paramount Group.^[37] On the same day it was reported that a parliamentary investigation into lobbying firms, including Bell Pottinger, and their links with ministers, would be launched, and that an internal investigation had begun at Bell Pottinger.^[38][39]

Clients

Bell Pottinger clients include:

• The government of Bahrain.^[40]
• Emirates Airline: Bell Pottinger won the global account in 2000, the account is managed by David Wilson.^[41][42] In February 2001 Bell Pottinger landed the Chelsea/Emirates deal.^[43]
• Currencies Direct: this account was won by Bell Pottinger following a competitive pitch in 2008.^[44]
• Fortnum & Mason: first hired QBO Bell Pottinger in 2004.^[45] Bell Pottinger handles its retail and brand PR.^[46]
• Milklink: hired Bell Pottinger initially in 2003.^[47]
• BPEX. In September 2007 Good Relations was briefed by BPEX, previously the Meat and Livestock Commission, to run a campaign to raise consumer awareness of the issue. The objective was to show that messages about the plight of pig farmers were reaching consumers in order to persuade supermarkets to increase the price paid to farmers. They came up with the ‘Pigs are worth it’ campaign.^[48]
• EADS:in April 2009 Bell Pottinger fought off six rival agencies to land a wide-ranging public affairs retainer with EADS.^[49]
• Airbus: the Bell Pottinger Group has worked with Airbus on UK government relations since 2004.^[49]
• The RSA Group appointed Fallon in advertising and Bell Pottinger in public relations in November 2009.^[50]
• PowerPerfector: the energy-consumption reduction technology company appointed Good Relations in September 2009, ahead of the UK government’s 2010 push on carbon reduction.^[51]
• Dutch oil company Trafigura.^[52] In September 2009, a Guardian article claimed that Bell Pottinger was "appalled" by a report into the Trafigura toxic oil disaster by a UN Human Rights repporteur. The full Guardian article in the national newspaper alleged that Bell Pottinger had claimed the report was premature, inaccurate, potentially damaging, poorly researched and deeply flawed. The UN report listed 15 deaths and 108,000 medical consultations. The Guardian also claimed that, later, Trafigura agreed to pay compensation to 31,000 west African victims.^[53][54] In October 2009, Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, posited that Lord (Tim) Bell "will be in charge of attempts to reposition positive public perceptions of the Trafigura brand. He might, for instance, suggest they become an official sponsor of the British Lions tour of South Africa and an arts prize".^[55]
• Almac Group: a provider of integrated drug development solutions to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, appointed Good Relations in March 2010.^[56][57]
• DWF: the national law firm’s Liverpool office appointed Bell Pottinger North in March 2010, the campaign is overseen by associate director Richard Clein.^[58]
• The government of Sri Lanka:^[59]
• Dyson Ltd.^[60]

Past clients include:

• The government of Belarus.^[61]
• Kate and Gerry McCann^[62]
• Ali Abdullah Saleh^[63]
• Boris Berozovsky^[64]
• The Templeton Prize^[65]
• The Pinochet Foundation ^[66]
• Augusto Pinochet^[67]

References

External links

• Company home page
• Powerbase profile on Bell Pottinger Communications