Tag Archives: peter bingle

Bell Pottinger deny work for DRC – despite listing them as a client

3:46pm Fri February 10th
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Bell Pottinger have threatened an African woman’s group with legal action for linking them with the government of the DRC. Following a protest outside their offices, the PR group has released a statement claiming attempting to distance themselves from the regime of Joseph Kabila:

“Bell Pottinger does not work for President Kabila; for the government of the DRC and did not work in any form on the recent election in that country. [Chairman] Peter Bingle has never worked for the DRC or any other African government.”

The press releases continues:

“Bell Pottinger has contacted the organisers of the current campaign against the DRC election result to understand why we have been implicated but has yet to receive a response.”

Perhaps Scrapbook can explain how this confusion has arisen: because Bell Pottinger’s own promotional documentation boasts of their previous work for the discredited regime! A presentation given to undercover reporters cites work for the government of the DRC on a slide entitled “Some of our experience: country campaigns”.

Some more top-class PR work on the back of last year’s sting by the Independent.

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Lobbyists: Times’ Finkelstein “will have lunch with just about anybody”

10:44am Tue December 6th
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The Independent have, to use the vernacular, torn lobbyists Bell Pottinger a new one this morning with a hidden camera laying bare their pitch to undercover journalists. Posing as representatives of Uzbek president Islam Karimov, whose repertoire includes boiling his political opponents alive, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism recorded the spinners’ boasts of access to senior government figures including David Cameron.

The splash is not without collateral damage. Setting out different ways in which the firm could leverage influence, Tory MP turned consultant Tim Collins embarrassed Times executive editor and chief leader writer Daniel Finkelstein by claiming:

“He will sit down and have lunch with just about anybody”

Indeed, the Bell Pottinger team know one or two things about London restaurants. Seen daily at culinary haunts such as Gordon Ramsay’s Petrus — where a bottle of the most lowly house plonk will set you back £56 — Bell Pottinger chair Peter Bingle has cultivated an image as “never knowingly under lunched”, telling PR Week’s David Singleton on schmoozing his wealthy accounts:

“For every client, every person you deal with, you know the restaurant they like, the food they like, the wine they like, the ambience,’ he says. ‘That’s part of what we do. If you can understand that people need to feel comfortable, at home and relaxed, that’s how it works.”

President Karimov likes his dissidents hard boiled.

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Macrory meltdown: Tory head of press proves David Cameron right with bizarre Twitter tirade

11:42am Sat March 6th
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The Labour Party has inflicted some some pretty impressive wounds on itself over the last three years but it is clear now that these are eclipsed by the Ashcroft saga. If Scrapbook was a Conservative activist he would be spitting feathers and it seems one of their number finally lost patience this week, causing a storm with an email which led Channel 4 News yesterday evening: ”Didn’t David Cameron or his colleagues understand that it should have been sorted out years ago rather than in the middle of a general election campaign?”

This was yet another news item they could do without in what has been a nightmare week for the Conservatives. But one struggles to fathom what their (usually sane) head of press, Henry Macrory, was thinking when he flooded his Twitter stream with a torrent of weak personal attacks on the senior Conservative lobbyist responsible for the email:

If senior Conservative staffers think that this is a strategic way to kill a story off then the party might be in more serious trouble than everyone thinks. The episode was spotted quickly by several politicos, including Mark Pack from Lib Dem Voice:

“The first one I saw made me wonder if perhaps a message had been sent by mistake, or an intended private message broadcast to the world in error. But that doesn’t explain eleven tweets, nor does a momentary piece of bad judgement. It’s a pretty unappetising picture of how to handle a negative story: send a long series of personal jibes. Perhaps though it’s good that they were sent via Twitter; that way we can all see how the Conservative Party’s press operation conducts itself” – Mark Pack

What did David Cameron say about “too many twits”?

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