QUOTATION OF THE DAY
"Morality is a job for priests, not P.R. men."
TIM BELL, co-founder of the now shuttered British public relations firm Bell Pottinger, which was brought down by a campaign that inflamed racial tensions in South Africa in service of a wealthy client.
• “道德是牧师的责任，”备受争议的英国贝尔·波廷杰(Bell Pottinger)公关公司一名联合创始人说道。我们的记者解
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| Private limited company | |
| Industry | Communications and Reputation management[1] |
| Founded | 1998 (London) |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
Key people
| Mark Smith (Chairman)[2] David Beck and David Wilson (Joint Managing Directors)[3][4] |
| Services | Public relations |
| Revenue | £27 million (2016)[5] |
Number of employees
| 278 (2014)[6] |
| Subsidiaries | Pelham Bell Pottinger |
| Website | bell-pottinger.co.uk |
Bell Pottinger Private (legally BPP Communications Ltd.; informally Bell Pottinger) was a British multinational public relations, reputation management and marketing company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. On 12 September 2017 it went into administration (bankruptcy) as a consequence of a scandal caused by some of its activities in South Africa.
Bell Pottinger offered services such as lobbying, speech writing, reputation management, and search engine optimisation to clients including companies, governments and rich individuals. It was the largest UK-based public relations consultancy measured by 2010 fee income.[7] Lord Bell, who advised Margaret Thatcher on media matters, was a co-founder of Bell Pottinger,[8] which, until July 2012, was a wholly owned subsidiary of Chime Communications plc. In June 2012, Lord Bell and Bell Pottinger CEO James Hendersoncompleted a £19.6m management buyout from Chime, with Chime retaining a 25% stake in the business.[9]
The firm has been described as having "the most controversial client list" in the PR industry.[10] It has been criticised numerous times for conflict-of-interest edits that the company has made on Wikipedia pages that involve or are about their clients. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the company was hired by the Pentagon to work in Iraq, making fake terror and news-style videos, targeting al-Qaeda, for the reported sum of $540m.[11]
During 2016 and 2017, a sustained 'dirty campaign' by the firm came to light, in which it played on racial animosity in South Africa, including the creation of fake news, in order to benefit its client Oakbay Investments, which is controlled by the controversial and influential Gupta family in South Africa and had strong ties to President Zuma's government.[12][13] In 2017, the resulting scandal saw the firm disgraced and expelled from its professional body.[14][15] Chief executive and largest shareholder James Henderson departed, lead partner Victoria Geoghegan was fired,[16][17][18] and Chime, its second-largest shareholder, wrote off its investment and departed.[19] There was an exodus of major clients and other senior staff,[19][20] with the result that many onlookers thought the UK firm was highly likely to close,[15][21] while operations in the Middle and Far East could be sold to new owners. On 12 September 2017, it was announced that Bell Pottinger had entered administration, with some staff immediately being made redundant.[22][23]
A September 2017 review by law firm Herbert Smith Freehills[24] concluded that the firm had breached ethical standards, lacked appropriate policies for managing controversial accounts, and had brought the PR industry into disrepute, and the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) said the firm had received a "damning indictment", having breached four of its conduct charter clauses.[25][26][27] The firm had previously claimed that the allegations were purely a smear campaign having no truth to them.[20]
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