News
Tories’ Coulson plans summer media blitz
June 5th 2008
Tory Party communications director Andy Coulson is to spearhead a ‘summer assault’ on the media, as long-serving strategy chief Steve Hilton prepares to take more of a back-seat role.
Tory insiders said that leader David Cameron would increasingly be relying on Coulson, following this week’s news that Hilton is relocating to the US.
This summer, Coulson will assert his control over the party by enforcing a strict ‘grid’ system that will ensure stories are regularly fed to the media and that telegenic Tories are constantly available to be interviewed.
The grid system will see the party taking a much more disciplined approach to media management than was the case last year, when Cameron was hit by a wave of negative coverage surrounding issues such as floods and grammar schools.
A Tory insider said: ‘Vacuums lead to problems, as we discovered last summer, so there will be no holiday this summer. There will be a summer assault. There will be a grid in place. It will be strategically planned so the right people are around at the right time.’
The source added: ‘We are planning to fill up the grid on a daily basis, so when Cameron and [shadow chancellor George] Osborne are not around, you’ll see some of the smaller hitters out, such as Peter Ainsworth and Eric Pickles.’
The Conservatives have insisted that Hilton will still remain in his post as director of strategy after relocating to the US, despite being 6,000 miles away from his leader. He is expected to return to London after six months.
But public affairs agency bosses said Coulson would become more powerful.
Weber Shandwick public affairs chairman Jon McLeod said: ‘Coulson’s influence will grow. We can now expect a new phase of process that is more focused on the daily cut and thrust of opposition politics while preparing for government.’
Open Road CEO Graham McMillan said: ‘Coulson will privately be pleased that Hilton will be forced to take more of a back-seat role.
‘They are a powerful combination but they have conflicted when media issues have sometimes clashed with the long-term strategy of repositioning the Tory party that Hilton has championed. This will mean more power to Coulson’s elbow.’
But Gavin Megaw, head of corporate communications and issues management at Fleishman-Hillard, said that Hilton would be more useful to Cameron ‘out of the Westminster bubble, and all the short term political and media distractions that brings.’
He added: ‘This move will ensure that the party is not distracted from the real issues that the country faces. Ironically, it will be much easier for Steve to capture the real mood of the country and translate it into the party’s long term plans from outside the Westminster bubble, away from all the short term politicking and media distractions.’
Gordon Brown’s team at Number Ten is understood to be keeping a close eye on developments amid mounting concern about the effectiveness of some of the techniques employed by Coulson.
PRWeek previously reported that Brown is said to be ‘obsessed’ with Coulson, who is credited with branding the PM a ‘ditherer.’
David Singleton
Whitehouse bid for APPC committee election fails
May 21st 2008
The Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC) has stopped one of its most outspoken members from joining its management committee.
Chris Whitehouse, MD of The Whitehouse Consultancy, failed to get enough votes at this week’s AGM.
Also unsuccessful in his attempt to be elected onto the committee was Cicero Consulting director Iain Anderson.
The AGM saw Precise Public Affairs director Robbie MacDuff voted in as the new chair and three new lobbyists - Lexington Communications director Gidon Freeman, Open Road director Martin LeJeune and Brands2Life public affairs director Darren Caplan - elected to the management committee.
After the votes were counted, most APPC members were privately focusing on the non-election of Whitehouse, who has previously urged the APPC to spend less time persuading non-member agencies to join up and more time speaking up for the industry as a whole.
‘This result shows just how few people buy in to his agenda,’ said one senior APPC member.
Last year, Whitehouse blasted the APPC over a letter that then chair Gill Morris sent out to all MPs stating that organisations should only employ lobbyists who are members of the APPC (PRWeek, 22 June 2007).
In a letter to Morris, Whitehouse wrote: ‘I see the position you have taken as being contrary to the long-term interests of the association. It turns an ethical debate into a thinly disguised attempt to secure commercial advantage for member companies.’
This week, Whitehouse said: ‘I have no doubt my forthright comments in defence of ethical principles… will have been a factor.’
Meanwhile, former chairs Michael Burrell, Warwick Smith and Gill Morris now get an automatic and ex-officio seat on the committee.
David Singleton
Orange brings in Open Road
May 16th 2008
Orange has appointed Open Road to handle public affairs activities for the mobile phone operator.
As a result, Orange will be ending its relationship with FD-LLM after ten years of working with the operator. Orange did not undertake a formal pitch process for the public affairs account.
Orange head of UK media relations Stuart Jackson said: ‘our decision to move on is simply driven by our desire for a fresh approach and new ideas, which we believe Open Road is best placed to offer.’
In February, Orange ditched Edelman after six years and brought in CSR specialists Planet 2050 and Good Business.
Matt Cartmell
There is a far better way of delivering PSB, says Martin Le Jeune
April 24th 2008
Martin Le Jeune appeared in Broadcast Magazine - Published 23 April 2008
Recently I received a kind invitation from the BBC to attend a lecture on public service broadcasting to be given by Sir David Attenborough. As I accepted - the man’s a genius after all - I reflected that the corporation must be seriously concerned to deploy its heaviest artillery at this stage of the debate about the future of PSB.
What worries the Beeb is the proposal, now being actively canvassed by some (including, to its shame, the Conservative party) that the licence fee should be top-sliced and offered to organisations which want to make public service programmes.
I agree whole-heartedly with the BBC. This is a terrible idea. However, my reasons for doing so have little in common with the apparatchiks of White City.
The corporation dislikes top-slicing for the perfectly sound reason that it might reduce its income. But it can’t say so. It prefers, as always, to clamber on the nearest piece of moral high ground and argue that top-slicing would destroy the precious accountability between licence-fee payer and BBC.
There’s not much in this. Accountability is a fairly evanescent concept when applied to the relationship between an organisation which levies a compulsory tax and those who pay it, whether willingly or not.
No, the real argument against top-slicing is that it might offer a fresh lease of life to an interventionist PSB system and a licence fee when we need them less and less. About one-third of households already pay up while consuming less than five hours of corporation programming each week. As audiences fragment, consumption of state-supported television channels will continue to decline. A middle-class minority who watch them will have their pleasure paid for by their poorer compatriots who get little value. That is inequitable.
Ofcom’s partiality to top-slicing appears to be based on the idea that plurality in public service content is essential “to keep the BBC honest”. Fine. But in fact there is bags more plurality in the form of public service content on non-PSB broadcasters (14,000 hours per month according to the multichannel TV trade body) and via the internet than ever before.
Then Ofcom argues that UK original production is central to PSB and the multichannel lot don’t deliver it. The case for intervention is made.
But this won’t do either. Take a look at the original PSB characteristics. They focus - rightly - on quality. But in the new consultation the emphasis on UK origination has been deliberately increased. So manic has Ofcom become in its attempts to make UK origination central to the debate that it even claims educating viewers about the world requires a lot of programmes made over here. By Brits. Isn’t this a bit lacking in logic?
I’d rather pass over in silence the deliberate attempt by Ofcom to understate the value of multichannel UK origination by the crude device of excluding sport. That’s simply shameful.
The final bit of analytical trickery is implicitly to assume that all UK PSB content provided by the terrestrials outside the BBC was the result of regulation. Without Ofcom no Corrie or national news? Hardly.
There is a better way. Keep the BBC focused on delivering PSB: it does it very well. It should get smaller over time - a steady reduction in the licence fee would be a good financial discipline - as commercial players provide more public service-style content. And they will. According to Ofcom’s own research, there is a huge appetite out there for that kind of material. So step back and let them provide it.
Martin Le Jeune is director of communications agency Open Road. He was previously head of public affairs at BSkyB
Never knowingly under-lunched
April 22nd 2008
Head down to Gordon Ramsay’s Petrus restaurant any lunchtime and chances are you’ll find Peter Bingle, Chairman, Bell Pottinger Public Affairs, tucking into some slow-cooked pork belly or seared tuna.
If he’s not there, you may find the gregarious lobbyist at Gran Paradiso - a favourite haunt of Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Michael Portillo, where Bingle had his stag do. Or at Christopher’s in Covent Garden, another preferred venue for the lobbying industry’s big hitters.
What is for certain is that Bingle is a not a man who is accustomed to spending lunchtimes slumped over his desk with a sandwich and a copy of the FT.
‘I have lunch once a day,’ he asserts happily. Does that mean he goes to a restaurant every day? ‘Over the past 20 years I’ve sustained the London restaurant industry and they’re very grateful to me,’ he jokes.
As the head of the UK’s biggest and best-known lobbying firm, Bingle sees a good lunch with a client or a contact as a crucial part of the job, and he uses it to good effect.
‘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.’
It’s an approach that 48-year-old Bingle, a former Tory councillor, has been perfecting since he first started out at the legendary public affairs outfit, Westminster Strategy, in the late 1980s. He has since risen steadily up the consultancy ladder to the point where he is now the living embodiment of Bell Pottinger’s lobbying practice and one of owner Lord Bell’s right-hand men.
Bingle has become increasingly vocal over the years. Fellow lobbyists point to his current spat with the Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC), the industry-wide body that requires all lobbying firms to reveal their client lists.
Most agencies are signed up, but Bingle has repeatedly made it clear that Bell Pottinger has no intention of joining.
Rivals say this is because Bell Pottinger does not want to expose its ‘unsavoury’ client list. Bell Pottinger rejects this. Either way, Bingle has been happy to ruffle feathers by predicting the demise of the APPC.
Edelman Europe vice-chair Michael Burrell, a former chair of the APPC, takes issue with Bingle over this - but there is clearly no vitriol.
‘Obviously, Peter and I profoundly disagree on the APPC issue, and I don’t think that’s going to change,’ says Burrell. ‘However, I have fond memories of working with him at Westminster Strategy. He has outstanding personal skills and very good knowledge of political parties, and he makes our practice a livelier profession.’
Open Road CEO Graham McMillan is also a fan, although his enthusiasm has clearly been dampened by Bingle’s outspoken attacks on an industry body that is trying to promote transparency and openness in lobbying.
‘Peter is an extraordinary character,’ says McMillan, who spent 12 years heading up Fishburn Hedges’ public affairs practice. ‘He has had a lot of success in the industry and achieved a lot for clients. He is a great networker and a legendary luncher, and he is also highly effective. But I’m afraid I part company with Bell Pottinger on the ethics of public affairs. The notion that somehow the APPC is going to disappear is as ridiculous as it is laughable.’
But Bingle will not be deterred from defending his agency, even if it courts controversy and puts him firmly in the minority. He even attempts to make a virtue out of his agency’s refusal to join the APPC.
‘I think we are perfectly right in saying openly that we agree with the vast majority of the code, but on the issue of client disclosure, we simply can’t do it and we’re quite open about it… I think people actually respect the fact that we say what we believe.’
Bingle certainly gives the impression that he believes in his crusade against the APPC. But then he is not a man to do things by halves. When he was a Tory councillor in Wandsworth in the 1980s, he introduced so many speed bumps that they were known as ‘Bingle bumps’.
He was also known as an ardent Thatcherite, although he insists he’s now fully signed up to David Cameron’s new touchy-feely agenda. ‘I’m a huge fan of David. I’ve known him since 1988. He was a Thatcherite then, so was I. He’s changed, so have I. Politics has moved on.’
As benefits any successful lobbyist, Bingle now has friends on both sides of the political fence. He frequently attends the opera with Labour MP Nick Brown, once a close ally of Gordon Brown. Another Labour MP and one-time Brownite, Nigel Griffiths, is a good friend. Both are godfathers to Bingle’s children.
Sitting in The Hospital, the exclusive private members club in Covent Garden, and sipping a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, Bingle appears well aware of his own profile and how he wants to promote “brand Bingle”.
‘Am I shy and quiet? No, I’m not. I have views, I’m an extrovert, I’m Sagittarian, I enjoy life. But I also want the best quality results and I want personal and professional success for me and my team.’
A good lunch is, of course, a vital part of the mix. In fact, it is so vital that Bingle has even been known to stretch to two lunches in a day if needed: ‘Once by mistake, and on another occasion I couldn’t get out of it.’
Bingle is almost sheepish about this admission, but he recovers quickly, determined to set his lunching in context. ‘Part of our style is that we enjoy life,’ he asserts boldly. ‘But it only works if what you deliver day in, day out in terms of quality, is top-notch.’
CV
2007 Chairman, Bell Pottinger Public Affairs
2001 MD, Bell Pottinger Public Affairs
2000 MD, GPC
1999 MD, political unit, The Communications Group
1987 Director, Westminster Strategy
1982 Councillor,
1990 Wandsworth Council
TURNING POINTS
What was your biggest career break?
During my last few months at LSE I was encouraged by my old friend Dick Tracey (before he became an MP) to apply for a job at the Independent Schools Information Service. When I arrived for the interview, Dick was part of the interviewing panel. Not surprisingly, I got the job!
What advice would you give someone climbing the PR career ladder?
Work hard and learn from others. Never be afraid to ask for advice and never sacrifice a friendship for short-term commercial gain. This is a people business and I want the nicest people to do best. There are exceptions to this rule, but I am too nice to mention them.
Who was your most notable mentor?
Over the past seven years I have had such fun. There are two special people who are responsible - Tim Bell and Piers Pottinger. Thanks to their encouragement and support, I have never felt more content or happy. If I could mention a third person it would be Patsy Baker [Bell Pottinger’s new business director], who has helped me be sensible on more occasions than I can possibly remember.
What do you prize most in new recruits?
I look for two qualities - being really talented and really nice. I want an office full of consultants who are great at what they do and great company socially.
David Singleton