Under Gaddafi’s regime media was strictly controlled, internet monitored, and the pervasive snooping of the secret police a constant concern.

Since the uprising began in February 2011 the internet has been down and telephone networks seriously degraded.

Our first encounterwith the inventiveness of the Libyan rebels was in Tobruk where we attended a ‘digital diwan’. Through a series of intermediaries we were led to a secret location where a satellite connection had been jury-rigged to provide internet access for 20 young operatives. Through an array of digital forums, in English and Arabic, they were connecting with other hubs inside Libya, sharing intelligence, organising resistance, developing anti Gaddafi content, and taking their message to the world.

As we drove along the coast towards Benghazi we noticed how in each town and village along the way, tents had been erected and makeshift offices set up as focal points for the uprising. In many of these a TV had been set up, beaming Al Jazeera to rapt citizens, watching events unfold across the region.

Hung on the walls would be portraits, memorial photographs of young martyrs (always men) who had lost their lives under Gaddafi’s regime. Many looked no older than 14 or 15. A reminder of the sheer brutality of the regime and the loss of so many lives.

And everywhere we saw cartoons. These cartoonists showed technical skill, humour, and had something to say. We saw a ghoulish Gaddafi dragging off a cart containing money, barrels of oil and other ill-gotten gains. Another showed an impish character in the shape of the royal flag of the uprising, jumping victoriously on top of a slain Gaddafi.

As we continued our journey we were struck by the sheer omnipresence of the flag – the green, black and red flag of the pre Gaddafi monarchy. Millions of these flags have been smuggled in, made by local tailors, and stitched together wherever materials could be found. And daubed on walls.

And as we passed through Brega we saw giant graffiti, in letters two feet high, declaring ‘Libya is For Everyone’, ‘Extremism is Not Accepted’, ’No to Qaeda’ and ‘Libya is a Unified Country’, and ‘Tripoli is Our Capital’.

Here is a country undergoing the ruptures of a war for freedom and for many, survival. The challenges are immense. But it is clear, that out of the turmoil is emerging a new expression. A new mode of communication. A liberated voice. And it is just beginning.

What on earth could a couple of “old hands” from the private sector in the US and UK possibly contribute to the formation of New Egypt?

One of us is from the world of marketing — big brands and their relationship with users in a competitive context. The other is from the world of peace-making — conflicted states and their relationship with citizens.

Between us we see the potential and the threat. New Egypt is a promise. Old Egypt has been partially destroyed, but incumbent forces could put substantial “drag” on the progress forward.

The spirit of freedom has succeeded in partially disabling the old system, but the challenges are greater than any existing system to solve them. These challenges will require New Egypt to invent new systems to address them. That is the journey you are on.

Our key advice is, involve the whole world in your journey.

Don’t let the West tune out of this great drama. Invite countries, brands, people, to witness, to participate, make contributions, to engage. Create involvement. Because it’s going to take the pulling power and creative energies of the world to help New Egypt become a reality. We have listed practical steps at the end of this article.

Remember, man is a small-group animal. We can feel for each other, but we have not developed sufficient capacity for large-scale empathy. Large-scale empathy is only possible through the accumulation of small stories that win our emotional attention.

And you have a lot of competition for attention, and not just in the region. There are three other global dramas playing out. Climate change is a source of deep anxiety. The end of cheap oil is limiting growth and accentuating national interest. The world’s finances are a vulnerability, as we see states start to go bankrupt.

New Egypt is at the centre of the fourth great drama — global social realignment.

Social realignment is aided by technology, both the mass media of television and the connectivity of the internet. Most colleagues in our industry would say technology has had an accelerating factor.

What the streets of Cairo show is that a much more fundamental change has taken place, from people who want their voices heard now, who want change now, who are willing to give up personal life now to pursue this kind of change. This is painful, but enormously charismatic and inspirational. You will succeed to the degree that you can maintain the participation of those who are working with you now, and to the degree you can extend, strengthen, and enhance the coalition for change you’re building.

Here’s what we recommend:

1. Recruit brands. Make a list of the world’s top brands that have self-determination as part of their brand character. For example, in the tech space we would identify both Apple and RIM/Blackberry as standing up for the freedom and security of their users. Make your own list. Write to these brands, ask them how they can become involved. Offer them ideas, but listen to their suggestions.

2. Put together a team of 100 “ambassadors”, your most articulate and engaging representatives. Offer sponsorships to enable them to be hosted to tell the story.

3. Make films…. not just for your own people, but for the extended diaspora. Your target audience is “us” — the part of all of us that is anxious about excessive concentration of power.

4. Get academic “brands” involved. You need premiere brands from the UK and the USA. Approach Stanford University and University of Cambridge looking to build a joint transition culture programme. As mentioned, you are going to invent new systems to deal with new problems. You should have an academic partner to help capture this work and spread the word.

5. Tap into the global leadership and change community. What kind of leadership skills are required for New Egypt to succeed? Who will lead New Egypt? How can you continue to work together, incorporating new allies, with differences, into a common project?

6. Finally, treat New Egypt like a brand. It’s not too early to form a national brand committee. You don’t need to pay for consultants to help. You’ve already got a powerful start – a brand that, in our view, symbolizes energy, positive change, peaceful change, and the importance of the individual. But it’s not about our view: it’s much more about deciding what you want the rest of us to feel about Egypt, living that, and creating engagements like the above to bring this to life.

7. Last, practice radical openness. Let the world in on everything you are going through – don’t package it. Your process will be imperfect, subject to personality disorder, confusion, ignorance, polarization — in other words it will be a very human process! Acknowledge the imperfections, acknowledge that this is an invention – a new way of doing – open up the discussion, commit to a way ahead that engages the positive energies of the world.

Dana and I look forward to hearing more, and if there’s a way we can help, we will.

mlinder@bell-pottinger.co.uk
dana@bellpottinger.net

Bell Pottinger Special Projects and Bell Pottinger Sans Frontières focus on strategic communications for conflict transformation. Their clients are entities, industry sectors, governments and societies.

The Olympics provide a fantastic business opportunity for hotels not just in 2012. Perhaps more importantly, they can help showcase the UK and provide lasting benefits in drawing visitors to London and encouraging them to return.

Savvy hoteliers from across the industry are mindful of the key role that will be played by social media in both scenarios.

Social media is a double-edged sword. On the upside, it is an unparalleled opportunity to attract guests, get them back and through endorsements, to reach out to their friends and contacts.

Today’s customer experience doesn’t begin at a hotel’s website; it begins in the social media ecosystem and knowing the customer is king. Its influence is such that it can also do untold damage to a hotel’s reputation and business in a very short time.

For hoteliers, the importance of travel consumer review sites should not be ignored.

A recent poll conducted by MSNBC shows that 86% of travelers rely on review sites to choose hotel accommodations. Trip Advisor, the world’s largest travel site, boasts 20 million members and over 40 million reviews alone, and there are more than 50 iPhone apps – in addition to the online blogs and communities that have influence as trusted sources.

Cost is a major driver of the hotel review sites’ visitors.

In the run-up to the Royal Wedding, it was widely anticipated that hotel occupancy in the capital over the weekend of 29 April 2011 would be full. The reality was that room occupancy in London in April dropped - staggeringly – to 60%.

Why? One pretty compelling factor may have been that some hotels were charging seven times their normal rates. That kind of customer experience does not take long to get around the social blogosphere. It takes a lot longer- if ever – to change.

It is understandable that in times of depressed spending and highly pressurised business targets, any business would want to take advantage of a great one-off opportunity to make money. But you must always weigh up the risk of the long-term impact.

The customer experience is paramount in providing the point of differentiation in many businesses today. In order to wow them with it you must respect them and know them. This now means understanding the disciplines of business intelligence and social media and leveraging them through their communities and through your own relationship building.

Visitors stayed away in droves in April, but we don’t yet know how much long-term damage by social media has been done to London hoteliers.

Socialcustomer.com Peter Auditore developed a name for the deluge of Tweets, Facebook, LinkedIn mentions and other digital means of notification a social media message or blog may now get : ‘The Social Media Crescendo Effect’.

This flow of influence crescendos through the ecosystem of blogs and communities which are all about content aggregation, viewing and endorsement.

Fortunately, the social media space provides opportunities that are not simply reactive, however. Assuming the customer is still prepared to listen to you, hoteliers can and should take the initiative and actively embrace customers online. eCRM cards, guest satisfaction surveys, customer reviews and sharing (and publishing) guests’ experiences are useful marketing tools – with the advantage of inviting guests to share their thoughts with you first. Savvy hoteliers who can react fast will be able to mitigate or even stop the potentially devastating effect of ‘the crescendo effect’ in its tracks.

Ultimately, customer satisfaction boils down to the message in the title of the latest book by Jonathan Tisch of Loews Hotels: ‘Chocolates on the Pillow aren’t enough’.

We have entered the era of multi-channel marketing - and responding – to the hyper-interactive travel consumer across all available media.

For 2012 and beyond, smart hoteliers will make the necessary efforts to communicate with guests where they are, ignoring no channel, particularly any existing customer review site.

It’s not too difficult to think why some recent developments might not be unmitigated good news for diplomats. But while it is possible to argue about the effects of wikileaks and the rise of social media, perhaps the first point to make is that they are part of a process that cannot be reversed.  Politicians and diplomats, like everyone else, are going to have to learn to live in - and adapt to – a new, more transparent world.

This is not just the result of wikileaks and social media.  Even before the advent of the internet many democracies were set on giving the public greater access to information.  The UK’s Freedom of Information Act coincided with the rise of the internet but was conceived independently of it.  In the UK the growth of judicial review and enforced disclosure of evidence in cases like Binyam Mohammed have probably opened up the workings of government, including the most secret, more than the internet.

Nevertheless we should not underestimate the changes taking place.  Not surprisingly, these are most striking in places where freedom of information has been curtailed.

There is a debate going on about how important a role social media played in events in Egypt and Tunisia. But there is not much doubt that we saw something new.  Social media allowed citizens not just to be consumers of information but to share that information, to connect and to organise.  The death at the hands of the police of an Egyptian activist, Khaled Said, resulted in a Facebook Group entitled “We are all Khaled Said” with half a million members.  This group helped organise and publicise the 25 January “Day of Rage” which kicked off the protest movement. The gathering storm seems to have been swept along by a combination of social media and traditional media like Al Jazeera who broadcast coverage of the demonstrations – some of it provided by the demonstrators themselves who took photos and videos on their mobiles and uploaded them to social networking sites. By the time the authorities shut down the internet and later mobile networks it was too late.

Social media networks allow citizens to realise they are not alone, giving them the courage and the opportunity to act.  As such these networks appear well suited to single issue campaigns.  Given the right political and economic conditions, they have helped mobilise the protest movements we have seen in theMiddle East.  But how effective will they be when it comes to what happens next?

Decisions about how those countries should now move forward are complex and contested, and it will be interesting to see what role social media will play in helping to formulate those decisions.

Access to more information and greater transparency should lead to better informed citizens.  This in turn should mean more accountability and greater participation which should strengthen democratic processes.  John Kampfner, writing recently in the Guardian about Wikileaks, said “the days when governments and corporations believed they had a right to secrecy to protect their narrow interests or save them from embarrassment are gone”.  But does freedom of information mean an information free-for-all, in which anything can or should be made publicly available regardless of whether there might be justifications for maintaining confidentiality or privacy? If well informed citizens are good for democracy, is transparency good for diplomacy and government?

There is sometimes a case for whistle-blowing – leaking aimed at exposing errors and abuse of power.  Wikileaks has some creditable achievements in this area. But the release of 250,000 State Department cables – judging admittedly by the small fraction so far published – does not appear to be about whistle-blowing.

These cables have not shown the US government up to its neck in conspiracies, cover-ups or other abuses of power. What they have brought to public view is, by-and-large, the normal traffic of diplomacy – information that governments prefer to keep confidential for the sake of their working relationships with other governments. This seems to me to raise some legitimate concerns.

Here I think it’s worth recalling the exemptions built into the Freedom of Information Act.  These include national security, defence, international relations and the formulation of government policy.  Negotiating with other governments, finding compromises, or working out the details of domestic policy, will always be more difficult if everything is open to public scrutiny. Getting diplomats to speak frankly, or advisers to give candid advice, will be impossible if their confidences cannot be respected. Without frank speaking, the quality of information on which governments must base their decisions deteriorates.

There are good, practical reasons why those FOI exemptions were written into the Act.

I said that we cannot turn back the tide.  Much of the social media revolution has the potential to improve democratic accountability and participation. More information can and should be made available through legitimate channels. Governments should be exposed when they abuse their power or make mistakes.  But governments are nevertheless justified in trying to keep some of what they do confidential.  In the wake of Wikileaks, the American and every other government will be busy improving their cyber security. But since no security arrangements are likely to be entirely leak-proof, I suspect one adaptation to recent events is that some highly sensitive discussions are going to take place without detailed records or without records at all. The cause of transparency may not have it all its own way.

If we’ve got it right you’ll begin to appreciate the unique depth and diversity of experience within our team, which I feel makes us such an interesting communications consultancy. We bring insight and opinion covering many industries and sectors, in geo-politics, and within corporate and global business and we are passionate and driven by the transformative power of an idea to change behaviour. As importantly we have the ability to realise those ideas for our clients, effectively.

Our own conversations are fueled by global trends and topical issues and this often leads to opinion which will be captured within our Sans Frontières blog. A number of our first blog posts demonstrate our diverse set of interests, covering:

• Innovative Political Communication in Arab Spring;
• The Customer is King: Social Media and the Hospitality Industry;
• Creating a Global Diaspora for the Transition to Democracy;
• The Implications of Wikileaks and the New Media for Democracy and Diplomacy.

We will be regularly updating the site with fresh thinking, relevant to our areas of expertise. So, if this whets the appetite, you wish to debate our thoughts and opinion, or if you would simply like to meet us, please do get in touch – click here for our Contact Us page.

Jonathan Adler
Chief Executive, Bell Pottinger Sans Frontières