11 August 2008
 We sat down with one of the most powerful PR personalities in the UK few days ago and asked him about his views on Middle East PR, the communications industry and the growing trends of new media in the region. Lord Bell, what is your view on the development of the communications industry in the Middle East, particularly PR? The Middle East, and particularly the Gulf, is going through a period of unprecedented economic growth and development. The media in the region is growing and developing fast, particularly in the Arabic language media with the development of news channels like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. This inevitably means that the communications industry, and this includes public relations, advertising and digital, will become more and more important in providing information and persuading people of the public reputations of organisations. The Middle East is a fast emerging market and it has a long way to develop further. There is enormous potential for further growth. My company, Bell Pottinger, has operated here in Dubai for six years and we have built a very successful regional business, which is now core to Chime’s international growth strategy.
Compared to UK do you think the way we do PR in the Middle East is different or we basically follow the same pattern? The UK is the most developed media market in the world, with an incredible number of different newspapers, broadcast channels and now online media. That has helped shape our communications industry and made it the most sophisticated in the world. You therefore can’t really compare the UK with the Middle East. However the one thing you can say is that it will become more like the UK than less like it. As the region’s media develops and becomes more sophisticated and better able to scrutinize governments and business, and that is clearly happening very rapidly, so the communications industry will develop. The latter shouldn’t be expected to develop in isolation. Ultimately the industry will be better valued when leaders’ are kept awake at night worrying about their reputations. As senior people become scrutinized more closely by the region’s media they will be more willing to pay for serious communications counsel, like they do in the markets like UK. We are already seeing demand increasing for strategic advice through Bell Pottinger’s work in the region. Everyone is talking about New Media right now. Does this mean that traditional PR is dead? I don’t really know what you mean by ‘traditional PR’, but my view is that new media is an important addition to the media landscape rather than a substitute for our more traditional media such as newspapers, television and radio. Newspapers have not been killed off by new media, in fact they compliment each other. New media is now an important and additional factor in the work of a communications professional but that doesn’t mean that the principles of communicating effectively have changed dramatically. As the demand for information grows so the skills of communicators have to expand. You were one of the founders of Saatchi & Saatchi and a close advisor to Margaret Thatcher. When you look back at those times, do you think doing PR then was harder compared to today? Saatchi & Saatchi was the world’s first global advertising operation so it wasn’t a public relations business. Although the only real difference between the two is that advertising is paid for and public relations relies on third party influencers. But to answer your question, I don’t necessarily think it was harder to operate then – it was different. What will be the main focus of your presentation on 13 October 2008 and what would you like our delegates to learn from it? I have spent several decades working in the communications industry, first in advertising and then building a successful public relations group in London. I want to share some of this experience during the session on 13 October. This will include some of the lessons I’ve learned both running advertising and public relations businesses but also as a communications advisor to both political and business leaders across the world. I also want to look at some of the issues I have helped them address. One of the areas I also want to explore is the growing importance of a strategic approach to communications – and the need for communications to take a seat at the board table. As companies in the region expand internationally, and as the region’s media continues to develop further, communications will increasingly be a matter for senior people, at Chairman or CEO level. So we will explore how communications directors can prepare themselves and their top management to communicate successfully in a rapidly developing market. |