Burson (formerly Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW)) is a global public relations and communications firm, headquartered in New York City, focused on building reputation for clients.
In February 2018, parent WPP Group PLC announced that it had merged its subsidiaries Cohn & Wolfe with Burson-Marsteller into Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW). In January 2024, WPP announced plans to merge BCW with Hill & Knowlton, forming the new agency, Burson.WPP (25 January 2024): WPP unites BCW and Hill & Knowlton to create Burson, a global leader built for a new era of communications. The merger was finalized in July 2024.Burson (13 June 2024): .
Donna Imperato served as global chief executive officer (CEO) from 2018 to 2023. She was previously CEO at Cohn & Wolfe. She announced her retirement in January 2023 and was replaced in August 2023 by Corey duBrowa, who previously served as head of communications and public affairs at Alphabet and is now Global CEO of Burson.
Operations BCW (Burson Cohn & Wolfe) was the world's third-largest public relations firm by revenue, as of 2018. According to PRovoke Media, the merger with Hill & Knowlton in 2024 made the newly formed Burson a top two global PR firm. It employed more than 4,000 people in 42 countries as of 2019. The company is the flagship brand in the Burson Group, whose brands include: AxiCom, Buchanan Communications, GCI Health, and Hill & Knowlton.Y&R PR Rebrands as Goodfuse; article; PR Week online; retrieved 2021-9-2
Burson is split into divisions by geographic region: North America, Latin America, Europe and Africa, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. Each region is led by a regional CEO who reports directly to the global CEO. Notable employees include Karen Hughes, former senior aide to U.S. president George W. Bush, Ari Fleischer, former White House Press Secretary, Tom Reed, a former six-term Congressman from Corning, New York, Thomas Nides, Former US Ambassador to Israel; Lord Watson of Richmond, a member of the House of Lords; Perry Yeatman, senior vice president of corporate affairs at Kraft Foods; Kathryn Beiser, vice president of corporate communications at Discover Financial Services; Bob Feldman and Jeff Hunt, co-founders and principals of PulsePoint Group communications consultancy; Daniel Lamarre, CEO of Cirque du Soleil, and prominent figures in a number of PR companies, including the CEOs of Ketchum Inc., Cohn & Wolfe and Wunderman.
Burson offers clients creative content and strategic communications services across the following sectors: business-to-business, consumer, corporate, crisis management, corporate social responsibility, healthcare, public affairs, and technology. The company focuses on building and protecting reputations. It uses a framework and consulting methodology to assess and actively manage what it refers to as “reputation capital” across four areas: company actions, communications, social narratives, and stakeholder beliefs.
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.
Burson-Marsteller 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) that 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.
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.