Oppressive foreign regimes are often such valuable accounts that they are considered worth the risk of a backlash
Mark Sweney in The Guardian
From foreign governments of dubious repute and dictators looking for an image overhaul to propaganda videos and fake Wikipedia entries – if there is a PR brief of dubious ethical nature that needs a fix then more often than not it is one of London’s big-name agencies that gets the call.
Bell Pottinger’s public vilification and expulsion from its own trade body for running a social media campaign to stir up racial tension in South Africa for the wealthy Gupta family has lifted the lid on the secretive and highly lucrative business of representing controversial clients.
Over more than three decades in the business Tim Bell, Margaret Thatcher’s favourite PR man, who left Bell Pottinger last summer, has amassed something of a who’s who of what could charitably be called sensitive clients.
These have included the Pinochet Foundation and the governments of Bahrain and Egypt, and there was a $500m (£384m) contract to make fake al-Qaida videos in Iraq for the US government.
“You say words like Pinochet and ‘oh my god that is bad news’, but I don’t accept that,” Lord Bell said. “There are two sides to every story and you have to handle it so your side is prevalent. I don’t know why they are [considered] risky clients. They are only risky if what you are trying to promote an idea that isn’t sound.”
He cited Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian president who has been called Europe’s last dictator, as an example of when taking on such clients went wrong. “There are lots of people I regret having got involved with. Lukashenko went well for six months then changed his mind [about the strategy], behaved differently and I resigned the account.”
Foreign governments with oppressive regimes are often such valuable accounts that they are considered worth the risk of a potential PR backlash.
The Portland agency, founded by Tony Blair’s former adviser Tim Allan, has previously advised Vladimir Putin and worked with Kazakhstan, Jordan and Morocco.
A contract with Qatar, which has been heavily criticised for its record on human rights, is focused on building a government affairs function. Portland declined to comment but Allan has previously said such work is about “openness and engagement” and that opening up secretive nations is “not an affront to democracy”.
Late last year the PR guru Matthew Freud picked up a hugely valuable brief from Saudi Arabia, which has executed more than 150 people in each of the last two years.
The account, led by deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was pitched to a number of corporate PR firms in London. The PR agency Freuds declined to comment but at the time of winning the business said it was focused on a “programme of economic, educational and cultural modernisation to help diversify the economy and create a sustainable and prosperous future for Saudi’s young people.”
A senior PR executive said: “Tyrants, dictatorships and governments that may not be democratic, or are sliding into one-party states, tend to come to places like London, New York and Washington effectively for reputation laundering. If you are cynical about it, that is what it is.”
A number of senior PR executives agree that Bell Pottinger working for the Gupta family, which has been accused of benefiting financially from its close links to the South African president, Jacob Zuma, is not in itself a PR crime.
But stoking racial tension in a country that has struggled to achieve balance in a post-apartheid era is a particularly egregious strategy to have pursued, and not one that is rife among the dark arts employed by UK agencies.
“I think that Bell Pottinger’s work is an outlier,” said Danny Rogers, editor-in-chief of PR Week. “They are accused of creating fake news and blogs, a serious transgression. It is not typical of what the British PR industry does. Work varies from what you would consider to be institution-building and opening communications by governments to the extreme end of the sort of work Bell Pottinger was doing for the Guptas.”
Francis Ingham, director general of the trade body PRCA for the last decade, said the UK industry was “overwhelmingly ethical and professional”.
“There is always the occasional rogue element and our role is to punish them,” he said.
Ever the risk-taker, Lord Bell, after leaving the agency he co-founded, immediately looked for more of the same, setting up Sans Frontières, the same name as the arm of Bell Pottinger that handled sometimes controversial geo-political work.
Bell, who has also represented clients including the News UK chief Rebekah Brooks and the entertainer Rolf Harris, said the Bell Pottinger scandal would prompt the industry to take cover for a while but then it would be business as usual.
“There will be a lull for a while, then people will forget the controversy and people will come back,” he said.
Yet, even the hard-bitten Bell admitted there were some clients beyond the pale even for him. He turned down representing Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, as well as the Labour party (“I wouldn’t have done a good job”).
“I wish we hadn’t taken the Guptas,” he said. “And I would like to have worked for BP, to have handled the Deepwater Horizon incident. As long as there is controversy about things there will be controversial characters. You can’t spend your life regretting what you do.”
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