How Bell Pottinger got the race ball rolling

Good PR should never be too obvious.

That is according to communication strategist Sarah Britten-Pillay, who believes Bell Pottinger may have a “bit of a public relations problem on its hands”.

“I’ve been thinking what we could learn from it, and they did some things very well. The ‘white monopoly capital’ slogan, they certainly helped to land that. I think the root of their strategy was to find things that were already a source of bitterness or division, and they in effect widened those.

“That’s what you do with a campaign like this: you try to find something that is credible and create a narrative around it. There were no alternative narratives, and in a vacuum it’s very easy to create a compelling story.

“It’s rooted in a perception many people do have, such as the frustrations with the slow pace of change, or the perception the economy is still largely in white hands. They took the kernel of something that many people do believe and enlarged on it as a distraction for their clients – and did that effectively.”

This narrative was then picked up by various players in the space who ran with it, including Mzwanele Manyi, The New Age, ANN7, and Black First Land First, she added.

“It was a narrative which was easy to understand and emotionally appealing and, particularly for the Andile Mngxitamas [Black First Land First founder] of this world. It’s really interesting that he was apparently the one who approached the Guptas – so clearly that was an influencer match made in heaven.

“Where it didn’t work was the Twitter bots. They were too unconvincing; it was too obvious the influencers were being paid or had vested interests. They would have worked more effectively if the strategy behind them was less blatant. But clearly nobody is accepting the apology from what I can see.”