Burson-Marsteller

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Burson Marsteller Offices, Central London

Burson Marsteller is one of the biggest and most notorious PR firms in the world. It is owned by communications conglomerate WPP.

Overview

Burson-Marsteller (B-M) is one of the largest public relations (PR) agencies in the world and also the most notorious. When helping its industry clients to escape environmental legislation or sprucing up the image of some of the most repressive governments on Earth, B-M brings to bear state of the art techniques in manipulating the mass media, legislators and public opinion.

In spite of B-M’s claims that the best way to deal with problems is to put one’s own house in order, the usual effect of PR is to maintain the status quo. By manipulating public opinion PR diverts attention away from difficult issues and creates the illusion of change so that a company or government can go about business as usual without having to worry about its reputation. By lobbying government and creating Astroturf campaigns PR helps to maintain a legislative environment on which industry can avoid real change

Market-Share/Importance

Whilst in recent years Burson-Marsteller slipped back from the number one spot it remains one of the largest PR firms in the world, and with recent restructuring looks set for strong growth in the coming years. Since 1979 the company has been a part of the Young & Rubicam Inc. advertising conglomerate, which in turn was acquired by WPP Group plc[1], the global communications services company, in October 2000. Its revenues for 2000 totalled $175m in the US and $303m worldwide, the highest in its history.

Today Burson-Marsteller employs 2,000 people in more than 60 offices in 35 countries around the world. That gives it a more international presence than any other agency, which is both an advantage (the firm is still the first choice for clients looking for genuine global reach) and a disadvantage.

B-M’s reliance on international business makes it vulnerable to economic downturns or under-performing offices, as well as currency fluctuations. In recent years the Asian market was under-performing, then Europe, which was flat last in 1999. But B-M Europe has now moved back to a geographic structure-a reversal of the practice area commitment the agency made five years ago-more suited to local conditions, and that should spur growth. Meanwhile, the firm is picking up high-profile wins in Asia, like the Hong Kong government's economic development program, and expanding in Latin America, where it has a strong e-commerce practice.

History

[2]

Founded in 1953 by Harold Burson, a freelance PR man and Jim Marsteller, owner of Marsteller Advertising, Burson-Marsteller has grown to become one of the largest PR agencies in the world and a market leader in all of the major areas of PR services.

Harold Burson’s original vision for the new company was to model it on Hill & Knowlton then the clear leader in the PR sector. He quickly took the company into new fields of PR wanting to diversify into new fields from his original speciality in business-to-business communications. B-M quickly set up offices across the USA and began to pursue larger and more prestigious clients. By 1959 revenues had reached nearly half a million dollars.

Although not yet a top tier PR firm, B-M took the gamble of moving into the European marketplace in the 1960s, a move that only Hill & Knowlton had previously taken. B-M established offices in London and Paris as well in Washington DC, and Los Angeles during the sixties.

Throughout the 1970s B-M continued to expand. In 1970 it entered the field of consumer public relations with its acquisition of Theodore R. Sills Inc. And it opened further offices in Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Sao Paolo, Bahrain and in Russia. In 1979 B-M was acquired by the Young & Rubicam group of companies, and could thus begin to integrate its services with a family of other companies practising PR, lobbying and advertising.

In 1983 B-M’s revenues exceeded those of Hill & Knowlton and in 1985 it was the first PR company to earn $100m in a year. The company’s expansion was relentless and yet more offices opened across the United states and around the world.

After years as the premier public relations agency, a position that became unquestionable after H&K’s partial collapse in the early nineties, B-M saw its leadership position erode throughout the ‘90s, thanks to internal problems and the fact that several other agencies improved dramatically over the same period. With recent restructuring however it has shown string growth and in 2000 earned $303m placing it fourth in the league table of global PR firms[3].

In 2000 Young & Rubicam was itself acquired by the WPP Group. So now Burson-Marsteller works in an even larger family of companies including its old rival Hill& Knowlton

Products/Services

[4]

B-M offers the full range of PR services including government relations, crisis management, issues and reputation management, brand building, product marketing, and communications training, to name a few of the twenty services listed on its web-site. These services are delivered by seven ‘practice’ areas within the company: advertising/creative, brand marketing, corporate/financial, healthcare, media, public affairs and technology. [See below for details]

Front groups

On three occasions over the last 12 months, Burson-Marsteller has been forced to step up transparency following criticism of its role in establishing and de facto running 'the Coalition to Prevent Deep-Vein Thrombosis" (on behalf of Aventis), 'European Women for HPV Testing' (on behalf of Digene Corporation) and the 'Bromine Science and Environment Forum' (on behalf of major producers of bromine flame retardants). In all these cases, the involvement of the companies - let alone Burson-Marsteller - was initially hidden or kept vague. [1]

Environmentalist PR?

Doorway of Burson Marsteller Offices, Central London

Burson-Marsteller has a history of employing environmentalists where possible, especially in the UK. These have included:

Biafra

In the 1960s B-M worked for the Nigerian government to spin the crushing of the Biafran revolt. A subsidiary of Burson Marsteller, Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelley, also worked with the Nigerian military junta in the early nineties. During this time there were routine human rights abuses against protestors such as the Ogoni, who were non-violently campaigning against the oil-giant Shell. [5]

Spin for torture

In the seventies, after a military coup in Argentina, B-M was hired to improve the country's image. During this period, an estimated 35,000 people disappeared and thousands were tortured.

Some of the torture techniques used during this period were el submarino (holding a person's head under water or excrement until near drowning), la picana (electric prod applied to the most sensitive parts of the body), rape, torture (tearing out toe nails) and putting live rats to feed on fresh wounds. [6]

A book was written on the disappeared called Nunca mas (Never More) [7]. It includes the following passage:

On 5 April 1978, at approximately 10 p.m., Dr Liwsky arrived at his flat in Flores, in Buenos Aires city:
As I was inserting the key in the lock I realized what was happening, because the door was pulled inwards violently and I stumbled forward.
I jumped back, trying to escape. Two shots (one in each leg) stopped me. However, I still put up a struggle, and for several minutes resisted, being handcuffed and hooded, as best I could. At the same time, I was shouting at the top of my lungs that I was being kidnapped, begging my neighbours to tell my family, and to try to stop them taking me away.
Finally, exhausted and blindfolded, I was told by the person who apparently was in command that my wife and two daughters had already been captured and 'disappeared'.
They had to drag me out, since I couldn't walk because of the wounds in my legs. As we were leaving the building, I saw a car with a flashing red light in the street. By the sound of the voices and commands, and the slamming of car doors, interspersed with shouts from my neighbours, I presumed that this was a police car.
After several minutes of heated argument, the police car left. The others then took me out of the building and threw me on to the floor of a car, possibly a Ford Falcon, and set off.
They hauled me out of the car in the same way, carrying me between four of them. We crossed four or five metres of what by the sound of it was a gravelled yard, then they threw me on to a table. They tied me by my hands and feet to its four corners.
The first voice I heard after being tied up was of someone who said he was a doctor. He told me the wounds on my legs were bleeding badly, so I should not try to resist in any way.
Then I heard another voice. This one said he was the 'Colonel'. He told me they knew I was not involved with terrorism or the guerrillas, but that they were going to torture me because I opposed the regime, because: 'I hadn't understood that in Argentina there was no room for any opposition to the Process of National Reorganization.' He then added: 'You're going to pay dearly for it ... the poor won't have any goody-goodies to look after them any more'.
Everything happened very quickly. From the moment they took me out of the car to the beginning of the first electric shock session took less time than I am taking to tell it. For days they applied electric shocks to my gums, nipples, genitals, abdomen and ears. Unintentionally, I managed to annoy them, because, I don't know why, although the shocks made me scream, jerk and shudder, they could not make me pass out.
They then began to beat me systematically and rhythmically with wooden sticks on my back, the backs of my thighs, my calves and the soles of my feet. At first the pain was dreadful. Then it became unbearable. Eventually I lost all feeling in the part of my body being beaten. The agonizing pain returned a short while after they finished hitting me. It was made still worse when they tore off my shirt, which had stuck to the wounds, in order to take me off for a fresh electric shock session. This continued for several days, alternating the two tortures. Sometimes they did both at the same time.
Such a combination of tortures can be fatal because, whereas electric shock produces muscular contractions, beating causes the muscle to relax (as a form of protection). Sometimes this can bring on heart failure.
In between torture sessions they left me hanging by my arms from hooks fixed in the wall of the cell where they had thrown me.
Sometimes they put me on to the torture table and stretched me out, tying my hands and feet to a machine which I can't describe since I never saw it, but which gave me the feeling that they were going to tear part of my body off.
At one point when I was face-down on the torture table, they lifted my head then removed my blindfold to show me a bloodstained rag. They asked me if I recognized it and, without waiting for a reply - impossible anyway because it was unrecognizable, and my eyesight was very badly affected - they told me it was a pair of my wife's knickers. No other explanation was given, so that I would suffer all the more ... then they blindfolded me again and carried on with their beating.
Ten days after I entered this 'pit', they brought my wife, Hilda Nora Ereñu, to my cell. I could scarcely see her, but she seemed in a pitiful state. They only left us together for two or three minutes, with one of the torturers present. When they took her away again, I thought that this would be the last time we saw each other. That it was the end for both of us.
On two or three occasions they also burnt me with a metal instrument. I didn't see this either, but I had the impression that they were pressing something hard into me. Not like a cigarette, which gets squashed, but something more like a red-hot nail.
One day they put me face-down on the torture table, tied me up (as always), and calmly began to strip the skin from the soles of my feet. I imagine, though I didn't see it because I was blindfolded, that they were doing it with a razor blade or a scalpel. I could feel them pulling as if they were trying to separate the skin at the edge of the wound with a pair of pincers. I passed out. From then on, strangely enough, I was able to faint very easily. As for example on the occasion when, showing me more bloodstained rags, they said these were my daughters' knickers, and asked me whether I wanted them to be tortured with me or separately. I began to feel that I was living alongside death. When I wasn't being tortured I had hallucinations about death - sometimes when I was awake, at other times while sleeping.
The most vivid and terrifying memory I have of all that time was of always living with death. I felt it was impossible to think, I desperately tried to summon up a thought in order to convince myself I wasn't dead. That I wasn't mad. At the same time, I wished with all my heart that they would kill me as soon as possible. In the midst of all this terror, I'm not sure when, they took me off to the 'operating theatre'. There they tied me up and began to torture my testicles. I don't know if they did this by hand or with a machine. I'd never experienced such pain. It was as though they were pulling out all my insides from my throat and brain downwards. As though my throat, brain, stomach and testicles were linked by a nylon thread which they were pulling on, while at the same time crushing everything. My only wish was for them to succeed in pulling all my insides out so that I would be completely empty. Then I passed out.
Without knowing how or when, I regained consciousness and they were tugging at me again. I fainted a second time.
Another day they took me out of my cell and, despite my swollen testicles, placed me face-down again. They tied me up and raped me slowly and deliberately by introducing a metal object into my anus. They then passed an electric current through the object. I cannot describe how everything inside me felt as though it were on fire.

It also worked with Indonesia when it was acused of genocide in East Timor.

Other Clients

B-M has a history of working with major polluters and despotic regimes.

In the seventies it worked with Babcock and Wilcox after the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster. The following decade, it worked with Union Carbide after the Bhopal disaster in India, which caused death or injury to tens of thousands of people. Union Carbide orginally tried to blame the disaster on sabotage. [8] [9]

The company has a history of working with the anti-environmental movement in the US and setting up corporate front groups such as the Business Council for Sustainable Development, British Colombian Forest Alliance, the Canadian Coalition for Clean and Renewable Energy or Australian Forest Protection Society. [10]

B-M also set up anti-smoking front-groups. In the nineties it created the National Smokers Alliance in the US with money from Philip Morris. [11]

It has worked for the oil industry against clean air and climate change legislation, forming front groups such as Foundation for Clean Air Progress. Its clients have included: the American Petroleum Institute, British Petroleum, Chevron, Ford Motor Company, Mitsubishi, Pennzoil Occidental Petroleum, and the government of Saudi Arabia. [12] [13]

B-M has also worked for Monsanto and the biotech body Europabio in Europe. A leaked memo prepared by Burson-Masteller gives us an insight into its PR. It argued that the biotech industry had to " Stay off the killing fields".

"Public issues of environmental and human health risk are communications killing fields for bioindustries in Europe. As a general rule, the industry voice cannot be expected to prevail in public opposition to adversarial voices on these issues. All the research evidence confirms that the perception of the profit motive fatally undermines industry's credibility on these questions. It said that instead the industry had to 'Fight fire with fire'.
"For EuropaBio to make the transition from effective policy interlocutor to effective public communicator, it is essential to shift from issues-based communications to stories-based communications. There are no issues-orientated media with any broad appeal, and the selling of complex issues coverage is a difficult task in any event because it contains little or no news value. Good stories, on the other hand, go around the world in minutes. That's the way adversaries play. That's the way industry must play". [14]

Other clients include the Iraqi National Congress

Obesity

Burson-Marsteller advertises a specialism on obesity on its website: [15]

Obesity and, in a broader sense, food/health/nutrition issues, arguably represent one of the biggest public health challenges in western societies today, with enormous repercussions for a variety of industries. Some see it as the modern-day equivalent to previous macro-issues like tobacco, chemical industry & environment, GMOs, etc. The WHO, the EU, national governments are all considering some regulations or recommendations to the general audience, the medical community or the business world. Indeed, companies increasingly have to carefully consider their positioning, strategy and messages on this issue.
Burson-Marsteller has the experience, track-record and credentials to help companies address the issue. We have a unique and comprehensive mix of capabilities and people, we have inroads into some of the key players and we understand how best to present the information to reporters.
Specifically, Burson-Marsteller can help with
  • Tracking Issues and Business/Political Intelligence - identify trends and flag key events and political decisions that influence and accelerate the development of the issue.
  • Constituency Relations - actions and on-going campaigns to shape the perceptions of key groups that are active in defining the media / public opinion and political agenda - trade and heath organizations, groups, etc.
  • Corporate Positioning - how to create a single differentiating communication platform
  • Public Affairs and Governmental Relations - how to engage in a dialogue with governmental organizations and prepare for forthcoming legislation
  • Media Relations - how to balance the debate in the media
  • Brand Building - how to strategically position a brand or product

What this means is that they will influence, fund, take-over or simply invent consumer and advocacy groups to pursue the corporate interest in minimum regulation.


Spinprofiles Resources


Further reading

Articles

Books

Notes

References [1] www.wpp.com <www.wpp.com/>, date viewed 3-5-2002 [2] B-M’s web site, www.bm.com/overview/history.html <www.bm.com/overview/history.html>, date viewed 3-5-2002 [3] Holmes Report, www.holmesreport.com/holmestemp/story.cfm?edit_id=739&type_id=3 <www.holmesreport.com/holmestemp/story.cfm?edit_id=739&type_id=3>, date viewed 20-6-2002 [4] <www.bm.com/overview/practice.html>, date viewed 3-5-2002

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