From Crisis Point to Turning Point

“The Global PR Revolution” is delving into ethics, morality, accuracy, and transparency — but the fact is that the gist of our job has always been to tell the truth, and this is what we’ve been doing in our everyday lives. Nothing proves this point better than the giant scandal that shocked the UK, South Africa, and the entire global PR community, culminating in September 2017, just as I started and restarted this book: the Bell Pottinger case. 

Bell Pottinger is a PR agency founded in 1987 by Lord Bell, 

Margaret Thatcher’s favorite PR adviser, whom I know personally, and Piers Pottinger. Lord Bell is a great personality in modern PR, and it is a pity that he got entangled in what has become not only South Africa’s biggest political scandal since the end of apartheid but also a landmark case for PR in the world of total transparency.

In January 2016, Lord Bell led a Bell Pottinger delegation to South Africa to pitch for business from the wealthy and powerful Guptas, the Indian-born family said to be connected to South African President Jacob Zuma. Bell Pottinger stood to gain 100,000 pounds (UK) per month from the Guptas’ company, Oakbay Investments,

for a campaign for “economic emancipation.”

The campaign, however, stirred up anger over so-called “white monopoly capital” and “economic apartheid,” thereby spurring racial tensions to divert attention from the Guptas, who had been accused of benefiting financially from their links to Zuma.

Leaked emails and documents and subsequent journalistic investigations have revealed that Bell Pottinger used a fake blog and Twitter account and other questionable tactics, such as misleading journalists during the campaign. Lord Bell went live on the BBC to allege that he had nothing to do with the negotiated contract.

To prove it, he resigned from Bell Pottinger.

By September 2017, the Bell Pottinger firm had all. Still, it collapsed after it was expelled from Britain’s Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) in an unprecedented move, underscoring better than anything else how crucial ethics, morality, and transparency are in today’s PR industry.

Many people deem the Bell Pottinger case an incredible precedent and a milestone in the PR industry. For the first time, there was an information leak from a PR company trying to use dishonest and subversive means to benefit their clients, and the industry reacted in the most honorable way. The Bell Pottinger affair is certainly going to be a lesson for all, bringing our industry even further

down the road of total transparency —

a point that goes back to my plain and simple definition of PR as telling the truth so people can understand it. Ten years ago, my definition of PR had more to do with

“telling the truth in such a way that people will like it.”

Things have changed. It isn’t so much about liking anymore as it is about understanding since we are all obliged to tell the truth. In all those years in the PR business, I have rejected the demands of dozens, maybe even hundreds of clients, to send out press releases that may have been inaccurate or even just a tiny bit too liberal with the truth. I have refused to organize press conferences for people whom I suspected of wishing to misrepresent reality. The age of total transparency generated by social media

will only make our industry “cleaner,”

and our role will be reduced to conveying our clients’ messages to their clients in the most creative way possible. Hence, my notion of PR agencies is something like editorial teams.

The book is available on Amazon.com and BeharBooks.com.