David Telling

Global communications programmes lead across Bell Pottinger Group and Chime

David Telling is a strategic communications specialist with over 25 years experience of advising countries, international corporations and brands.

He started his career in advertising working at Ted Bates followed by DDB where he worked on some of the largest campaigns in the UK at that time.

He moved into integrated communications with a move to Valin Pollen handling all the communications for water and electricity companies being privatised.

At Dewe Rogerson he worked on Scottish Widows and handled the flotations of National Grid, Orange and other European IPOs.

He joined the Chime Group in 1999, where he has successfully managed and grown two of its businesses.

Today he leads Chime’s companies in complex, international, multi-disciplinary accounts for countries and major corporations, such as the global economic reputation of Bahrain, and global crisis and issues management for Trafigura.

The starting point has to be determining what the overall long term objectives are for your client’s organisation or country. You then need to deeply and broadly understand the hows and whys behind them. The communications strategy and implementation flows and stays true to that, creating a shared agenda with the client.

That has to be your guide, as with clients who have strong desires to lead and drive their reputation, by definition, you have to originate rather than comment or follow.