An ex-advisor to Margaret Thatcher on PR related
issues and the founder of the Bell Pottinger Group Company, Lord Bell, is one
of the most notorious PR-managers in the world. The long list of his clients
includes besides Margaret Thatcher and Boris Berezovsky such world famous
companies as Walt Disney, McDonald’s, Rolls-Royce, Rolex, UK Royal
Mail. Timothy Bell has become really famous after three successful election
campaigns of Margaret Thatcher. Following his recommendations, the ‘Iron Lady’
has even been changing her hair style. In 1990 Mr. Bell was awarded with Knight’s
Title for his achievements vis-à-vis Great
Britain and in 1998 a Prime
Minister of that time Tony Blair made him a life Peer of the Houses of Lords of
the British Parliament. Lord Bell is viewed to have connections with an ex-Prime
Minister of Thailand, Thaksin China Vat,
a Media-Magnate Rupert Murdoch, an ex-President of the Russian Federation Boris
Yeltsin and the President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko.
On the other hand, Lord Bell refused his services to the
President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe and explained that he always “refuse those
who I cannot help. For instance, due to the fact that I don’t share their
principles”.
«A Good Will
Ambassador of the Great
Britain»
The first rumors
about the President of Belarus starting to get worried about the image of the
country in the West appeared in March 2008 when Lord Bell was on a “private
business visit” to Minsk. On 13
March the Head of the country met with the British lord in his residence. The
meeting had an expressed political nature. Lukashenko said to the PR-guru, “the
world is developing in a way that it is impossible to live in it without your
profession”. As a result of the meeting, it was decided that the British expert
will assist Belarus in
improving its image abroad. There were no official reports on signing any
contracts related to provision of PR-services. Aleksandr Lukashenko only
announced that Mr. Bell will become a “Good Will Ambassador of the Great
Britain”. The President expressed his confidence
that the businessman will find it “pleasant to work in our country, with the
authorities that are being persecuted”. These authorities, Mr. Lukashenko said,
were prepared to provide the British PR-manager with any information in order
to persuade him that Belarus is a
European country.
The details
of the visit of Lord Bell to Minsk became
public literally within a couple of days when on 18 March an interview of Lord
Bell with the newspaper the Moscow Times was published. It revealed that the conversation
between the PR-guru and the President was longer than intended due to the fact
that “from time to time interpreters did not know how to translate”. The
President f Belarus wanted to
hear from Mr. Bell “in what way his company Bell Pottinger was going to sell the
ex-Soviet Republic to the West”. Tim Bell refused to reveal the concrete ways
of advertising he used to the Moscow Times, however he shared a secret,
mentioning that according to Lukashenko, Belarus was a
country that was ready to give a lot in order to be regarded as an open country
by the others. In an interview with the Moscow Times Bell said that “Lukashenko
sees no reasons why Belarus could not
become both a friend of the West and of Russia”.
In the mean
time relations with the United States become more complicated…
At this
moment it is worth mentioning that it was in March-April when the diplomatic
row with the United States of America was at its
peak, when following the American decision to introduce economic sanctions with
regard to Belarus, the Belarusian
authorities decided to expel the American Ambassador and thirty other
diplomats. As a result of this row, there is no American Ambassador in Belarus and the visa
section has not been functioning for almost a year.
“The goal of
the campaign is to improve the international reputation of Belarus”
Only five
months after the first visit of Lord Bell i.e. in August 2008 the contract was
finally signed. However Lord Bell said then that the terms and conditions of
the contract were a commercial secret and that he had no right to talk about
its details. “The goal of the campaign is to improve the international
reputation of Belarus. In
particular, to try to improve political and economic relations with the
European Union”.
In the
following interviews Timothy Bell underlined that in order to change reputation
of one or another country, one has to realize “where it starts and where to go.
I start with an overview of the situation: where we stand, what we would like
to achieve. It immediately shows what kind of reputation a country would like
to create in another country or in an entire region, in a country with
democratic authority or with a dictatorship”, Lord Bell pointed. “Then I make
an assessment of the current reputation of the country. It includes three
components: what you do what you say you do and what others say about it. I
would like to ask a county that places an order what sort of reputation it
would like to rely on and what to achieve within 5-10 years period”, says
Timothy Bell. Bell said that he
will work with the image of Belarus and not with
the image of the Belarusian President. In addition he admitted that “the
President obviously constitutes part of the country and its image”.
“Commercial
contract with terms and conditions being a matter of confidentiality”
A working
group of Lord Bell on Belarus is
comprised of five staff members. The cost of the contract, terms of its
implementation and other details are not made public: “a commercial contract with terms and conditions being a
matter of confidentiality”. The only available information is that the contract
previews carrying out two campaigns: one informational and a marketing one. The
goal of the informational campaign is to “implement the most comprehensive
picture about Belarus au contraire to the image which has already
been created by the world Media”. Marketing campaign targets the improvement of
the investment attractiveness of the country.
What and how
precisely Mr. Bell is planning to work may be found in his interviews with
various Media. Thus in an interview with the Russian TV company NTV in a
programme “Glavny Geroi” (“Main Heroe”) in October 2008 Lord Bell said about
the President Lukashenko, “He is a very conscious, cautious and decisive man, a
very friendly one”. While commenting the remark of the ex-State Secretary of
the USA Condoleezza Rice - "the
last dictatorship in Europe" - to describe Belarusian President
Alexander Lukashenko's regime, Timothy Bell said that it was a “silly
remark”. “She should have visited Minsk and looked at everything with her own
eyes”, he stressed. Lord Bell pointed that the majority of Belarusians were
happy about their president.
“Bell
is a wonderful PR-Manager however he is not aware of the specifics of the country”
The Head of the Board of
Directors of the famous Russian Centre of Political Consulting “Nikkolo M”, Mr Igor Mintusov, who organized a number of PR-campaigns
in Russia, Mongolia, Lithuania, Nicaragua, Poland and USA, thinks, “Naturally, it will be not just
a hard task, but extremely hard task for Lord Bell. PR technologies do not
constitute panacea from all troubles and do not create miracles in politics,
the PR campaign has to be based on certain political activities. In this
situation, the solution to the problem would depend on real political actions
of the Belarusian authorities proving the PR-ideas Mr Tim Bell might come up
with”.
A sociologist Andrey Vardamatsky said about lord Bell, “What about
his [lord Bell] major
drawback? He is a wonderful PR-manager however he is simply not aware of the
specifics of the country. He lives in a different country therefore he can not
propose proper positioning of the country. He needs to use an intro-approach,
an approach from the inside”.
The Head of the
Mizes Research Centre Yaroslav Romanchuk is convinced:
"It is
impossible to hide behind the brightest PR-dress something that will scare away
foreign investors in Belarus. I regard
the proposal of Timothy Bell as a continuation of the local ideological
campaign “For Strong, Prosperous Belarus!” in the European context. Using the
money of the Belarusian tax payers”.
