Burson-Marsteller

Deceptive tactics: Bovine Growth Hormone
In the 1980s recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) also called bovine somatatrophin (BST) was Monsanto’s flagship biotechnology product. As one of the first biotech products to be commercialized, it drew attention from the whole biotech industry. A genetically engineered substitute for the cow growth hormone, rBGH was developed to increase the milk yield of dairy cows. In 1985, Monsanto CEO R.J. Mahoney estimated the market for the artificial hormone at $1bn a year. The main barriers to sales were gaining approval for commercial use and overcoming unfavorable scientific opinions. Monsanto’s own tests showed that the milk soured more quickly, and treated cows were at increased risk of mastitis (udder infection), which could lead to higher levels of pus in the milk. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientist Dr. Richard Burroughs concluded from analyzing test data that Monsanto was manipulating the figures. In 1989 he was fired after telling a Congressional investigatory committee that his superiors were suppressing his accusations. To deal with the expected controversy, Monsanto assembled a force of PR companies, including B-M, to disseminate pro-rBGH information to the dairy industry, the press, and the general public. They created a coalition, purportedly grassroots in origin, to carry out extensive lobbying of legislators. In two cases, B-M employees were exposed as working covertly during the pro-rBGH campaign.

Just before the release of his report on rBGH, Michael Hansen of the Consumers Union was contacted by a woman claiming to be a scheduler for ABC television’s show “Nightline.” She asked for a preview copy of the report and Hansen’s CV. Hansen's inquiries revealed that no one from ABC had called him and that the "scheduler's "fax number" rang at B-M.

B-M also tried to infiltrate the campaign against rBGH run by academic, author, and environmental campaigner Jeremy Rifkin. A B-M employee, claiming to represent the non-existent Maryland Citizen Consumers Council, attended anti-rBGH meetings. After her manner aroused suspicions, the activists exposed her. B-M disavowed all knowledge of her activities, suggesting that she was attending in her free time.

Europe's biotech campaign
Burson-Marsteller also devised the PR strategy for Europabio, the European biotech industry association. B-M famously advised the European industry to avoid the “communications killing fields” of “public issues of environmental and human health risk,” i.e., to avoid participating in any public debate on biotech issues. The strategy recommended leaving it to regulatory bodies and other third parties to deal with these issues; communicating through symbols and stories, not logic; and creating a positive image of biotechnology through highlighting new products and potential beneficiaries; and developing a very close relationship with the media; “Europabio must turn itself into the journalist's best and most reliable continuing source of biotechnology/bioindustries inspiration and information -- the first-stop help desk where they get no industry propaganda but practical, editor-pleasing, deadline-beating, connect to interesting stories and personalities -- even adversarial -- relevant to their readerships.”

Climate change
B-M helped to set up the Business Council on Sustainable Development which successfully prevented the 1992 Rio Earth from dealing with climate change, and orchestrated many other anti-emissions control campaigns.

Foundation to oppose tougher air pollution controls
Burson-Marsteller is behind a deceptively-named "Foundation for Clean Air Progress" (FCAP), founded in 1995. Describing itself as “Your source for public information and education about improving air quality in America,” the group pressures the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) not to adopt tougher air pollution controls. The Washington Post reported on June 17, 1997, that FCAP participated in a "multimillion-dollar campaign to turn back EPA regulations for smog and soot. ... The nerve center behind the attack is a coalition of more than 500 businesses and trade groups that calls itself the Air Quality Standards Coalition. Created specifically to battle the clean air proposals, the coalition operates out of the offices of the National Association of Manufacturers, a Washington-based trade group. Its leadership includes top managers of petroleum, automotive, and utility companies as well as long-time Washington insiders such as C. Boyden Gray, a counsel to former president George Bush. The same industries would likely bear the brunt of the costs for the new regulations, which the EPA estimates at more than $ 6 billion a year.”

Anti-fossil fuel tax campaign
In 1993 Burson-Marsteller led a $1.8m campaign to defeat a proposed tax on fossil fuels. President Clinton’s BTU (British Thermal Unit) Tax was the U.S.'s most ambitious measure to combat climate change. The BTU Tax was to be levied on fossil fuels, specifically on the heat generating capacity of fossil fuels. (A BTU is a measure of how much heat a given mass of fuel releases.) A $.25 per gallon gasoline tax and other levies were at the center of Clinton’s plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. The National Association of Manufacturers (a sponsor of the Global Climate Coalition), the American Petroleum Institute, more than 1,600 large and small companies, as well as farmers organized to create the American Energy Alliance (AEA), specifically to derail the BTU tax.

The AEA hired B-M to orchestrate the campaign. Deploying some 45 staff in 23 states, B-M organised a "grassroots" letter writing and phone-in campaign. It placed anti-BTU articles and editorials in the press, commissioned sceptical economists to write reports, and obtained media access for businesspeople to express their views. It also lobbied against the tax in Washington, D.C. Congressional support for the BTU tax quickly withered and Clinton’s plan was defeated. Congress voted for the tax to be kept below $.05 per gallon. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen described the BTU campaign as “one of the most sophisticated jobs I've seen by lobbyists in a long time.”

Rio Earth Summit
In the early '90s, Burson-Marsteller was instrumental in setting up, and subsequently representing, the Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD), whose members include Chevron, Volkswagen, Ciba-Geigy, Mitsubishi, Dow Chemicals, Du Pont, and Shell. B-M’s mission was to greenwash the image of big business in the run-up to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and to ensure that the meeting passed no binding regulations to restrict transnational corporations.

The BCSD was headed by Stephen Schmidheiny. The Swiss billionaire industrialist was a close friend of the secretary-general of the UN Council on Environment and Development (UNCED). BCSD heavily lobbied UNCED at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, pushing for participants not discuss or even circulate proposals drawn up by the UN's own Center for Transnational Corporations concerning the environmental impact of these large companies and issues of corporate responsibility and accountability. The efforts help kill efforts to impose accountability on the TNCs, and kept climate change off the agenda.

In 1994 the BCSD merged with the World Industry Council for the Environment. WICE was another industry front group created by the International Chamber of Commerce to promote the industry agenda at Rio. It became the World Business Council on Sustainable Development, which continues to oppose enforceable environmental legislation, and pushes for voluntary corporate action on environmental issues. (Europe Inc., Pluto Press, p151)

Rumored involvement in anti-environmental movement
The "Wise Use Movement" is a loose network of groups within the U.S. joined by opposition to environmental pressure groups and environmental legislation, and promotion of an agenda stressing the rights of private property owners to decide to how best to exploit natural resources on their lands. The movement unites workers in the extractive industries, libertarian free marketers, and the extreme right. Many commentators believe that B-M was instrumental in setting up the Wise Use movement. They point to the fact that some of B-M’s clients have sponsored Wise Use groups, and in the 1980s when the movement began, 36 of the companies known to be sponsoring Wise Use groups were B-M clients. Direct proof of B-M’s involvement remains elusive.

B-M's public front for Canada's forestry industry
In late 1990 B-M was hired to re-engineer the public image of Canada’s forest industries. The cornerstone of its campaign was a new front group, the British Columbia Forest Alliance. Launched in April 1991, the Alliance was headed Jack Munro, formerly the chairperson of the International Wood Workers of America Union. Gary Ley, of B-M, was appointed executive director. In its first year the alliance received $1m from corporate sponsors.

The Vancouver Sun, British Columbia's biggest newspaper, with a daily circulation of 260,000, drew visits from forest company officials and alliance members. Before the launch of the BC Forest Alliance, the Sun had had five full-time reporters covering forestry, native affairs, and other environment-related issues. Soon only one environment journalist remained. The rest were assigned to a category called "resources" in the business section. Reporters who wrote critically about the forest industry, and those who probed the workings of the Forest Alliance and Burson-Marsteller itself, say they were subjected to pressure. The Sun's forestry reporter, Ben Parfitt, was pulled from environmental issues after writing about Burson-Marsteller and the Forest Alliance. A logging company official and an industry consultant grilled reporter Mark Hume in the editor’s office, about columns he had written about a pro-logging coalition, while the editor, Hume says, stood by in silence. The BC Forest Alliance now claims a membership of 10,000 individuals and 300 companies and industry groups.

Forest Protection Society (Australia)
Throughout the 1980s the Australian timber industry was targeted by ecological campaigns and direct action. In response, the industry spawned a new front group, the Forest Protection Society (FPS), with start-up money from the Forest Industry Campaign Association.

Employing Wise Use-style rhetoric, the FPS got itself listed as an environmental protection organization in the Directory of Australian Associations. The FPS promotes a “balanced use” of Australia’s forests, and claims that the best way to protect forests is to extract the wood and sell it. From the start the FPS aimed to build a large "grassroots" membership to suggest an independent standpoint. The FPS involves itself in numerous forest campaigns, fighting for the rights of local communities to exploit the forests, and supporting the interests of the timber industry. By April 1998 the FPS had 56 local branches across Australia.

Other tactics used by the FPS include taking over local environmentalist meetings, with the result that activists became distracted from their ongoing campaign. Like many groups associated with the American Wise Use movement, the FPS is a client of Burson-Marsteller.

Big Tobacco
The National Smokers Alliance (NSA) is a front group, formed by B-M, which mobilized the support of smokers around the US to oppose new anti-smoking legislation. Members were recruited through direct marketing, free phone hotlines, and on-the-street canvassing. By 1995 the NSA claimed 3 million members whom it encourages to oppose smoking bans and other restrictions on smoking.

Fighting for Environmental Pollution
In India in 1984, B-M handled crisis management for U.S. company Union Carbide when its pesticide plant in Bhopal leaked more than 40 tons of toxic gas. The poison killed 2,000 people instantly, 5,000 after three days; at least 20,000 have died since, with hundreds of thousands more are suffering lung, eye, and gastric complaints. Tuberculosis incidence in Bhopal is three times the Indian average. Following B-M’s PR and lobbying work, in 1989, as part of a court settlement, Union Carbide paid $470m on condition that it not be held liable in any future criminal or civil proceedings, and that the Indian Supreme Court drop manslaughter charges against Union Carbide, despite evidence of its lack of safety precautions. The company has now decamped from India, leaving most of the responsibility for the disaster with the Indian Government.

Exxon Valdez oil spill
Burson-Marsteller has officially denied conducting PR crisis management over the Exxon Valdez oil spill, but confirms that after the accident, Exxon hired the PR firm to conduct a study of the case.

Californians for Realistic Vehicle Standards
Burson-Marsteller is also behind the front group "Californians for Realistic Vehicle Standards," formed to oppose restrictions on automobile emissions of nitrogen oxide and other polluting gases.

Three Mile Island - Crisis PR
B-M conducted crisis management PR for Babcock & Wilcox, the company that built the Three Mile Island reactor. The plant itself, operated by Metropolitan Edison, was a client of PR giant Hill & Knowlton.

Keep America Beautiful
B-M works for the best-known anti-littering campaign in the USA, Keep America Beautiful (KAB). KAB, which attempts to educate and motivate the American public to reduce littering, is funded by many corporate interests. In the 1970s and 1980s, environmental and consumer groups accused it of opposing various state and national efforts to establish mandatory bottle and can recycling. The proposed legislation would have helped the litter problem, but did not serve the interests of some of KAB's corporate sponsors including Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, and the Reynolds Metal Company. The implicit message is that littering, along with other environmental issues, is the responsibility of the individual citizen. KAB -- which also receives funding from the four largest U.S. tobacco companies, Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson and Lorillard -- has ignored the issue of cigarette butt littering.

Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment
In Europe, B-M set up the Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment, in "defense of the beverage carton against environmental and regulatory pressures." Aimed at making disposable cartons look environmentally friendly, the Alliance is sponsored by packaging interests such as Tetra Pak, Elopak, Bowater (now called REXAM), and Weyerhauser.

BP’s Torrey Canyon oil spill
In the wake of the 1967 Torrey Canyon oil spill that devastated wildlife along the Cornish coastline, B-M handled crisis management for its long-standing client, BP (formerly British Petrolem, which merged with Amoco, formerly Standard Oil of Indiana, and in December 1998, becoming BPAmoco).

Czech Mining
B-M conducted a PR campaign in the Czech Republic on behalf of TVX Gold, a Canadian mining corporation. Encountering local opposition, TVX needed help renewing its exploration license for a gold deposit near the town of Kaperske Hory. The project posed a substantial threat to the unique environment of the Sumava Mountains, and became a major controversy in the Czech Republic. In January 1997, TVX halted pre-mining exploration in Kasperske Hory when authorities would not renew its drilling license.

B-M’s campaign began as a relatively modest attempt to allay fears about the environmental impact of the project, but grew into a blatant attempt to replace the mayor of Kapserske Hory, Frantisek Stibal. Along the way B-M hired Czech celebrities to promote the project and published a free local newsletter in the area. Vojtech Kotecky, of Friends of the Earth Czech Republic, described the campaign as unscrupulous, full of dirty personal attacks, sophisticated, and well-directed propaganda, combined with offers of financial support to the local community. After two years of fierce campaigning from both sides, the Czech government cancelled TVX’s concession after Stibal was re-elected in landslide victory.

Nigeria
B-M represented both the Nigerian government and Royal Dutch/Shell during and after the Biafran war. With reports of instability and genocide marring Nigeria’s international image, it hired B-M to discredit the information. The relationship continued long after the Biafran war. From 1991-92 the Nigerian military junta paid B-M’s lobbying subsidiary, Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly (acquired in 1991) more than $1m in fees.

Indonesia
After the invasion of East Timor, around 200,000 people -- one third of the population -- was killed, sparking charges of attempted genocide. The Indonesian government has also been accused of many other human rights abuses, including genocidal policies against the peoples of Irian Jaya,. In 1996, Jakarta hired B-M to clean up its image. B-M says it did not handle the issue of genocide in East Timor.

Argentina
B-M worked for the Argentinian military junta led by Gen. Jorge Videla, who seized power in a 1976 coup. B-M’s job was to improve the country's international image, and create the impression of stability to attract foreign investment. During Videla's rule, 35,000 people "disappeared" and thousands of political prisoners were tortured. Videla is now serving a life sentence for murder.

Saudi Arabia, et al.
B-M has worked for a host of regimes with appalling human rights records including the notoriously repressive and corrupt government of Saudi Arabia, that of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu, and the governments of Sri Lanka and Singapore. Three days after the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center in New York, in which 13 of the 16 alleged suicide bombers were Saudis, Saudi Arabia again hired B-M to ensure that its national image remained untarnished. Campaign to save silicon breasts
In 1991 B-M began a crisis PR campaign for Dow-Corning to handle the growing public health controversy over silicone breast implants. Dow Corning had been retaining B-M for years, but as the controversy exploded in late 1990 and early 1991 so did B-M’s account fees. In 1990 B-M billed Dow-Corning just $6,000, but from May 1991 to Feb 1992 that fee rose to nearly $3.8m. While Dow-Corning and the wider medical industry had known about the problems with breast implants since the 1970s, it and the multi-million dollar cosmetic surgery industry had managed to ignore them until the issue gained significant TV coverage in December 1990. B-M organized an astro-turf (false grassroots) campaign to save silicone breast implants. The PR firm organized women who had opted for silicone implants for reconstruction after breast cancer surgery into an effective and very public campaign. In 1992, the FDA banned silicone implants except for use with cancer patients.

Campaigns in Mexico for free-trade
Hired by the Salinas administration in 1990 to promote Mexico's North America Free-Trade Association (NAFTA) agenda, B-M spearheaded a successful campaign to sell NAFTA in the U.S. The Center for Public Integrity estimates that the government of Mexico spent in excess of $25m on the NAFTA campaign in the U.S. alone. To secure passage of the agreement, B-M prepared numerous reports and press and video news releases. Generally, its public relations work focused on the themes of jobs, the environment, and support for NAFTA among Latin Americans. B-M targeted newspapers, radio and TV stations, civic groups, public officials, press services, educational institutions, and industry groups for dissemination of pro-NAFTA information. B-M also marginalized NAFTA opposition coming from groups concerned with economic justice and human rights issues in Mexico, by portraying their objections as "Mexico-bashing." This spin was later refined to combat the Zapatista PR crisis by portraying the rebellion and the trade deal as two unconnected issues.

B-M picked up plenty of work from the Mexican government before and after the NAFTA campaign. When Mexico’s challenge to the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act was upheld in August 1991, public outrage erupted in the US, prompting B-M to immediately issue press and video releases proclaiming Mexico’s commitment to dolphin protection. By the mid-1990s Young & Rubicam, B-M’s parent company, was making more than $100m a year from contracts in Mexico.

Animal Industry Foundation
In response to mounting criticism from animal rights and environmental activists, the U.S. agricultural industry fought back with SLAPP suits (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation), which used or threatened libel and defamation laws to gag critics. Big Ag also lobbied successfully for "food disparagement laws," which strengthen the corporate legal position against public criticism. One group that conducted much of the campaign for food disparagement laws and other protections for the agricultural industry was the B-M funded Animal Industry Foundation[61], replaced in 2001 by the Animal Agriculture Alliance.

CTN
The Corporate TV Network began life as a joint venture between B-M and ITN, making extra profits for ITN by using its staff and equipment to make videos for the corporate market. There have been allegations that the link between ITN and CTN may effect the reporting of stories about CTN clients on ITN News, particularly regarding ITN’s reporting of Shell’s involvement in the repression of the Ogoni people in Nigeria[63]. Bruce Whitehead of ITN felt that his investigation of the Ogoni controversy may have been dropped owing to a conflict of interests: CTN was also making a film on the same subject on behalf of Shell, to present the oil company’s side of the story.While Burson-Marsteller recently slipped from the number-one spot, it remains one of the world's largest PR firms, and, with 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 in October 2000 by WPP Group plc, the global communications services company. Its revenues for 2000 totaled $175m in the U.S. 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 structure 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 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 to currency fluctuations. In recent years the Asian market was under-performing, then Europe. Hoping to spur growth, B-M has reversed its five-year-old practice area commitment and in Europe has now moved back to a geographic structure--more suited to local conditions. Meanwhile, the firm is picking up high-profile wins in Asia, such as the Hong Kong government's economic development program, and is expanding in Latin America, where it has a strong e-commerce practice.

B-M structures its business around seven key practices or specializations: Advertising/creative, brand marketing, corporate/financial, healthcare, media, public affairs and technology. Activities within the advertising/creative practice are conducted by three subsidiary companies. According to B-M’s website:

Marsteller Advertising is a “full-service advertising agency specializing in corporate, business-to-business, and issue-related (or public information) communications.”

Burson-Marsteller Productions handles event management, and TPS “offers a wide range of communications services, from designing and producing websites, interactive CD-ROMS and presentation graphics to providing video production and broadcast services.”

The Brand Marketing practice employs around 150 people under the leadership of Linda Recupero. The practice offers a wide range of services toward the end of increasing market share for clients’ brands.

The Corporate/Financial practice handles all aspects of a client company's “perception management” – “to help top management understand, enhance, and manage the perceptions of their corporation held by key audiences, including shareholders and the investing community, the media and, by extension, the general public, employees and opinion makers.”

The extraordinary growth and sophistication of the healthcare industry has prompted B-M to set up a separate practice just for healthcare companies. The Healthcare practice offers the complete range of PR services to healthcare companies from product marketing, to crisis management, to long term issues management around complex and controversial subjects such as biotechnology. B-M boasts that it can manage and even create “scientific and political consensus around issues” in the healthcare sector.

The Media practice is B-M’s pool of expertise in using the media to deliver chosen messages, and making "media relations" an essential part of any effective PR strategy. As well as media relations, the media practice also deals with internet-based PR, and communications training. Specialists with backgrounds in a wide range of media are employed to ensure access to as many media sources as possible.

Public Affairs/Government Relations work in the U.S. and Europe is carried out by B-M’s wholly owned subsidiary, BKSH. In the rest of the world it is undertaken by B-M’s own offices.

Formed in 1994, Technology, the first of the "practices," concentrated mostly on electronic technologies. Like the healthcare practice, the technology practice provides a broad range of services that might otherwise be provided by other practices, specifically to companies that need specialist knowledge of technology issues.