The story
History
Burson traces its roots to the founding of Burson-Marsteller in 1953 and Cohn & Wolfe in 1970. As part of a restructuring strategy, in 2018, parent company WPP PLC merged Burson-Marsteller, the sixth-largest PR firm worldwide, and Cohn & Wolfe, which ranked 12th. The merger created the third-largest PR firm, which was named Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW). WPP stated that it merged the firms due to their complementary skills, including Burson-Marsteller's public affairs and corporate work and Cohn & Wolfe's digital creative content, consumer, and health care work.
In August 2018, BCW acquired HZ, an integrated creative agency, headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, with additional offices in Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C. In April 2024, the leadership of HZ completed a buyback of the firm from BCW.
Merger with Hill & Knowlton
In January 2024, WPP announced the planned merger of BCW with Hill & Knowlton. The merger was completed in July, and the new company was named Burson. It has over 6,000 employees, making it one of the largest PR agencies in the world. Corey duBrowa was named global CEO of Burson, and Hill & Knowlton CEO AnnaMaria DeSalva was named global chairman.
History
Prior to its merger with Cohn & Wolfe, Burson-Marsteller comprised 77 offices and 85 affiliate offices, operating in 110 countries across six continents. The company was founded by Harold Burson (1921–2020) and William Marsteller in 1953, and, by the early 1980s, had become one of the largest public relations companies in the world. In 1979, it became a subsidiary of Young & Rubicam, which in turn was acquired later by WPP Group PLC. In 2018, it merged with Cohn & Wolfe and was renamed Burson Cohn & Wolfe.
1950s and 1960s: Company founding and early history
Prior to the establishment of Burson-Marsteller, co-founders Harold Burson and William "Bill" Marsteller owned separate agencies focused on public relations and advertising, respectively. Burson had established Harold Burson Public Relations in 1946, based in New York City. Meanwhile, Marsteller had founded the Chicago-based advertising agency Marsteller Gebhardt and Reed (later renamed Marsteller Inc.) in 1951. Burson and Marsteller met in 1952 when Marsteller needed a PR agency to work on an account for his client, Rockwell Manufacturing, and was referred to Burson. The two agencies shared the Rockwell account and, later, an account for Clark Engineering Equipment Company. In 1953, they entered into a partnership, creating a new public relations firm that was owned jointly by Burson and by Marsteller's advertising agency.
Beginning with a staff of four and just two main clients, operations quickly grew, and in the early 1960s Burson-Marsteller began to establish a presence outside of the United States. In 1960, they opened an office in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, becoming the first U.S. PR agency to do so. One year later, in 1961, following the founding of the Common Market in Europe, the company established its first European office in Geneva, followed shortly by an office in Brussels in 1965. At this time, Hill & Knowlton was the only other U.S. PR firm with an office outside the United States. In 1967, Burson-Marsteller opened its first London office.
1970s: General Motors
One of the firm's earliest clients was the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors (GM), which made diesel locomotives, beginning in 1956. It was the only PR agency retained by GM at the time. In 1970, Burson-Marsteller was engaged by the main division of GM to manage its PR, following stiff competition from larger firms. According to Harold Burson, GM was seeking outside PR management following the publication of Ralph Nader's book Unsafe at Any Speed, which called into question GM's design practices, and led to negative media representation of the company. GM remained a client of Burson-Marsteller for the next 11 years. At the time they took on GM, Burson-Marsteller was the 10th largest PR firm in the United States. In 1974, Wolcott and Company, a Los Angeles-based public relations firm founded by Robert "Bob" B. Wolcott Jr., merged with Burson-Marsteller. Wolcott Co. had offices in New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. Bob Wolcott joined the executive management team and was in charge of West Coast and Asian operations.
1980s: Young & Rubicam and worldwide expansion
In 1979, the company was sold to the communications group Young & Rubicam. In his memoirs, Burson described the decision as being made for two primary reasons. First, Burson-Marsteller needed capital to finance its expansion. Second, Marsteller's advertising agency had declined in profitability and "needed management fixing". After the takeover, Burson became executive vice-president and a board member of Young & Rubicam. As part of Young & Rubicam in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Burson-Marsteller became known for its crisis management work. Clients consulting Burson-Marsteller for crisis management included: Babcock & Wilcox, following the Three Mile Island accident in 1979; Johnson & Johnson, during the 1982 Tylenol crisis; and Union Carbide Corporation following the 1984 Bhopal disaster. The company was also involved in the introduction of New Coke in early 1985. In interviews, Burson has stated that the negative reaction of the public to the new product was unexpected. Following the reintroduction of the original Coke recipe, the strategy that Burson-Marsteller advised for Coca-Cola was to "be humble" and apologize to the U.S. public for deciding to change to New Coke. Just two months after original Coke was reintroduced as Classic Coke, sales of Coke, Coca-Cola Classic and Cherry Coke had risen 10 percent compared with the previous year.
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The 1980s also saw the company become involved in large-scale publicity events. In 1984, Burson-Marsteller first brought entertainment and sports together to generate publicity for its clients with the organization of the AT&T Olympic Torch Relay, sponsored by the telecommunications company. This was the largest promotional event that the company had undertaken to date, with up to 150 people working full-time on organizing the 8,000-mile relay. One year later, Burson-Marsteller executive Geoff Nightingale came up with the idea of Hands Across America as a fundraising event for USA for Africa sponsored by its client Coca-Cola.
By 1983, Burson-Marsteller had become the world's largest PR firm, with $63.8 million in revenue for that year. The following year it acquired Cohn & Wolfe, an Atlanta-based public relations firm, which operated as a subsidiary of Burson-Marsteller until 2000. Burson-Marsteller had established its first offices in Asia in 1973, in Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo. By the mid-1980s, it had further expanded overseas operations with offices in Australia and New Zealand. A subsidiary of the Xinhua News Agency (New China News Agency) partnered with Burson-Marsteller in 1985, providing commercial public relations for foreign firms in China and for Chinese companies internationally. This subsidiary later became China Global Public Relations, mainland China's first specialized public relations consulting firm. Following Burson-Marsteller's appointment as public relations counsel for the Seoul Olympics in 1988, it became the first foreign public relations firm to open a wholly owned communications and marketing office in South Korea.
Burson-Marsteller also expanded into Central and South America during the 1980s. Offices were established in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and São Paulo. A regional headquarters was established in Miami, Florida, in May 1989, and the company won MasterCard International's Latin American account, which became one of the firm's largest accounts.
The agency's business grew about 24% annually during the 1980s, according to Burson, and PR Week stated in 1988 that Burson-Marsteller was "the largest international PR firm in the world". The following year, Burson stepped down as CEO. He continued to work on major accounts such as Coca-Cola and Merrill Lynch, while James H. Dowling succeeded him as the second CEO of Burson-Marsteller.
1990s: Global presence and Philip Morris
By 1990, Burson-Marsteller had branches in 28 countries, with 52 offices and over 2,300 employees. In 1991, the firm acquired Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly (BMSK), which was perhaps most well known for their work with prominent Republicans and businesses as well as foreign governments, including controversial autocrats and despots.
International work carried out by Burson-Marsteller in the early 1990s included a public relations campaign undertaken for the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism in 1993, following terrorist attacks on tourists in Egypt. The campaign aimed to encourage tourists to visit Egypt, focusing on recent archaeological discoveries.
In December 1994, the company received attention after an executive at Burson-Marsteller was killed by a mailbomb sent by the "Unabomber". The Washington Post reported that Ted Kaczynski targeted Burson-Marsteller executive Thomas Mosser due to a belief that Exxon had consulted with Burson-Marsteller during the Valdez oil spill. Burson-Marsteller stated that they had advised Exxon in the past and had been asked to review and analyze Exxon's handling of the disaster afterwards, but had not been engaged to manage the crisis itself.
In the 1990s the company also received considerable attention for PR campaigns on behalf of tobacco company Altria (formerly Philip Morris Companies Inc.) in which it was engaged to discredit anti-smoking research and legislation attempts. In 1993, Burson-Marsteller helped organize a response to a 1992 United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report which had identified secondhand smoke as a Group A human carcinogen. The strategy employed by Burson-Marsteller was to encourage doubt among consumers about the scientific validity of the EPA report and to target legislators who supported curbs on smoking. As part of this strategy, the company organized a smokers' rights group called the National Smokers Alliance (NSA), to target politicians who supported anti-smoking legislation. The NSA was founded with an estimated $4 million in Philip Morris seed money and the involvement of some fifty other tobacco industry players.
Their activities also included support for The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), which was created in 1993 by APCO Worldwide, another major public relations firm, with funding from Philip Morris. In Europe, Burson-Marsteller provided support for an advertising campaign in 1996 carried out by Philip Morris. Advertisements were published comparing the health risks of secondhand smoke exposure with a range of other activities. This campaign received significant coverage in the media across Europe. Burson-Marsteller was criticized in the media for its involvement with Philip Morris, and in 1999 a demonstration was held outside the firm's headquarters, protesting their role as PR for Philip Morris. Those involved went to great lengths not to reveal the tobacco industry support of these organizations, to give the appearance they represented grassroots opposition to anti-smoking laws rather than the business interests of their sponsors.
At the end of the 1990s, the firm had retained its position as the largest PR agency in the world, with fees of over $274 million that year. As part of the company's continued growth, it acquired grassroots lobbying organization Direct Impact in April 1999. In the same year, Harold Burson was named by PR Week as the PR industry's "most influential person of the 20th century".
2000s
Young & Rubicam became a subsidiary of the media group WPP Group PLC in 2000, and Burson-Marsteller became part of WPP. The U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing hired Burson-Marsteller in 1995 to publicize the new designs of U.S. paper money, both in the United States and internationally. The Bureau had launched its second redesign of the bills in ten years, with the intention of preventing counterfeiting. Burson-Marsteller had also been involved in research prior to the redesign to ensure that the new designs would be acceptable to the public.
In December 2005, Burson-Marsteller acquired the Indian firm Genesis PR as a wholly owned subsidiary. Following this acquisition, India and China became Burson-Marsteller's second and third-largest markets worldwide, based on number of employees. The renamed Genesis Burson-Marsteller was announced as the company's hub for the South Asian market in 2008. Prior to the acquisition, since 2002, Genesis had been Burson-Marsteller's exclusive representative in India.
Mark Penn became the CEO of Burson-Marsteller in December 2005, following a period of instability during which there were three leadership changes in one year. Penn's predecessor, Tom Nides, had left Burson-Marsteller after eight months in the role. A White House political pollster for six years, he was best known for his work with President Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Bill Gates. Penn (who had not previously worked within PR) introduced new strategies at Burson-Marsteller, including one called "DIGS" (digital, integrated, global, strategic) and "Evidence-Based Communications", described by the company as a scientific and data-driven approach to communications, which drew from Penn's background in research.
Penn and Burson-Marsteller received negative media attention in 2008 when his work on behalf of the Colombian government (then seeking a free-trade agreement with the United States) became a political liability for the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, who was opposed to a free-trade pact with Colombia. Penn described the dual role an "error in judgment" following which the Colombian government terminated its client relationship. Clinton later revised her opinion in favor of the free-trade pact.
Penn's leadership at Burson-Marsteller has been cited by PRWeek as a model for the public relations industry, particularly combining public affairs experience with public relations. In April 2011, industry expert Paul Holmes named Burson-Marsteller the U.S. Large Agency of the Year, citing its double-digit growth within the United States and record 2010 profits as factors in the award, crediting Penn with improved performance and Burson's "global recovery".
Burson-Marsteller's clients in the late 2000s included Ford Motor Company, which hired the company as crisis management consultants in 2009, and American International Group (AIG), on whose behalf the firm undertook crisis management work in 2008 and 2009. Burson-Marsteller was brought in by AIG to help respond to requests for information from customers, employees and the media, due to the liquidity crisis it suffered in September 2008. In 2010, Burson-Marsteller announced its commitment to no longer accept work on behalf of the tobacco industry.
In May 2011, Burson-Marsteller was hired by Facebook to conduct a PR attack on Google. Burson-Marsteller contacted a number of media companies and bloggers in an effort to get them to write unflattering stories about Google. The campaign backfired when one of the bloggers went public by posting the emails he received from Burson-Marsteller on the Internet.
Don Baer, the former communications director for the Clinton administration, was named CEO of Burson-Marsteller in 2012. He served in that capacity through February 2018, when WPP merged Burson-Marsteller with Cohn & Wolfe to create Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW).
History
Cohn & Wolfe was a global communications & public relations firm. In 1984, Burson-Marsteller acquired the Atlanta-based public relations firm, and it operated as a subsidiary of Burson-Marsteller until 2000. It was part of Young & Rubicam and then also a part of WPP. In 2018, it merged with Burson-Marsteller. It was founded by Bob Cohn and Norman Wolfe in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1970.
In 1999, the firm managed the campaign for Paxil, a drug produced by GlaxoSmithKline. The firm also ran a publicity campaign on social anxiety disorder, which made Paxil the world's top-selling antidepressant.
From Wikipedia’s article on Burson (company), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4