Working with our sister company, Bell Pottinger Middle East (BPME), BPPA was appointed to assist the newly formed Abu Dhabi Government Performance Management Division (PMD) on the development and launch of their 2008 – 2012 Abu Dhabi Strategic Plan. The Strategic Plan was developed over two years and unveiled a new approach to government for the Emirate. The PMD wanted to celebrate the completed project by letting each government department launch their own section of the plan, before a bigger launch for the document in full.

Members of BPPA spent six weeks in Abu Dhabi assisting the PMD to devise, prepare for, and manage the launches of the sections of the document to the region’s media, residents, and internal government stakeholders. Our role was to offer guidance to the individual government departments on how best to ensure a level of quality control. However, the biggest challenge we faced was that a new newspaper was launching in Abu Dhabi. This newspaper promised to be more critical and of a much higher standard of reporting than its competitors in the region. Its Editor in Chief is the former Editor of the Daily Telegraph, Martin Newland, and the newspaper’s reporters and editors are drawn from well respected newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. BPPA prepared senior members of the Abu Dhabi government for this new, more critical style of reporting.

Our work involved managing the content development and design of the document itself, ensuring that it was up to international government standards. The work also included preparation for the individual government department launches. This involved running workshops for the Chairmen, strategic planning teams and communications teams for all 28 government departments involved in the document. A toolkit was supplied to support the departments and the communications staff of each department also received media training in front of cameras at the workshop. Additional services provided during the project included speechwriting, drafting press releases, organising press briefings and event organisation.

BPPA added value by ensuring consistency across all communications emanating from the government on the topic of the Strategic Plan. The client achieved a launch process that successfully displayed their hard work to a number of their target audiences. The Strategic Plan received positive front page coverage and comment pieces in the new newspaper, as well as other publications in the region. Owing to the phased individual launches, media coverage of the document was also sustained over a number of weeks, achieving maximum exposure.