Catechism Communications is a political strategy firm for the good guys. It is composed of a network of experts (rather unfashionable today, we realise) – specialists in political campaigns, media relations, intelligence and internet security. These experts are drawn from political parties, academia and public service. We select them to work only on campaigns or training programmes that suit their skills and interests, so you pay for the carefully designed services you receive and not for our overheads.
Our clients are governments, political parties and campaign groups, NGOs and occasionally, businesses, families and individuals. Most often, they are international organisations seeking a window into Westminster and the UK, and those who understand that a reputation made in the UK carries globally. It helps, therefore, that we are London-based and outward-looking.
We are unabashedly old-world in our principles, unfailingly new-world in our methods and unreservedly selective about our clients. We are cause-driven. If you're not interesting, you probably won't interest us. As a rule, we don't work with prospective clients whose ideals and objectives we do not share.
Political communications is a growing industry and a dying art. Agencies are large, unwieldy beasts, mostly unfit for purpose. They dazzle prospective clients with stardust at the top, while glass-and-steel sweatshops full of earnest interns churn out platitudes their unsuspecting charges want to hear. The business model is broken – the interests of agencies and clients rarely coincide, and agencies almost always put their own first. Good data is perceived as merely an obstacle in the robotic march to the next pitch meeting. Good judgement is in equally short supply in a Westminster echo chamber stunned into silence by every major political event in recent history. Service levels, visibly or not, are in terminal decline.
We’re not here to fix it, but we do offer an alternative. Data-rich political analysis, including qualitative insights from beyond the Bubble. Media advice and training that won’t politely elide your failings. Prose from the sort of chaps who still say ‘speechwriting’ instead of ‘content generation’. Polling that never assumes a straight question will elicit the most insightful answer. Online security training that won’t leave you confounded by acronyms. In short, all the tools you need to win elegantly in a twenty-first century campaign or crisis.
The rotten order of political analysis is being upturned before our eyes. We watched as the panic-stricken big beasts of the agency world scrambled to understand recent cataclysms, nervously calling upon their allies for the inside track. It was too late – they’d all gone. But where others saw shocks, we saw deep-lying trends. Catechism is a firm forged from the fires of political uncertainty, born just in time for the age of chaos. We tell you what we know, the extent of the unknown and what may yet be shaped by your ingenuity.
And yes, we always wear ties. Even on Fridays.