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'Century's most influential PR figure'

Wednesday, July 18, 2001

By Teresa F. Lindeman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Harold Burson isn't a man who believes his own press. A trade magazine last year named him the century's most influential public relations figure, a nice honor. But, hey, how would you prove it?

	Harold Burson, 80, co-founder of the Burson-Marsteller public relations firm, said the nature of the relationship between agencies and clients has changed in the almost 50 years since he helped form the company. (Andy Starnes/Post-Gazette)

Still, the 80-year-old founding chairman of Burson-Marsteller proudly notes that the firm he and Bill Marsteller founded almost 50 years ago probably has 20,000 alumni around the world. Worldwide, the company claims 2,200 employees and $304 million in revenue, with $3.5 million coming from the local 30-person office.

Burson isn't involved in management of the business anymore. He still works with a few longtime clients, and was in town recently to meet some who use the firm's Gateway Center office.

He has long credited Pittsburgh with helping create Burson-Marsteller. The Tennessee native had gone into the public relations business on his own in New York City after World War II, and by February 1952 had five employees.

"I got a telephone call one day from a friend at the New York Times. He said a man named Bill Marsteller who has got an advertising agency in Chicago is looking to hire a public relations firm to do a project for his client Rockwell [Manufacturing Co.]."

The two men met to talk about the company and the guy who ran it, Williard "Al" Rockwell Jr.

"They had about a half-dozen plants around Pittsburgh. One in Du Bois, one in Uniontown, a couple over in Ohio. And Al Rockwell, being a graduate engineer, thought that companies made their money on the factory floor. He wanted all of the executives to be out visiting these plants all the time."

Rockwell decided to buy a helicopter to transport his executives to the plants, the first helicopter purchased for executive travel. Before that, corporations mainly bought helicopters to patrol pipelines or transmission lines.

"So he, in addition to getting delivery of this thing and accomplishing his purpose, he thought at least he should be on the cover of Life Magazine. At the very least."

Burson laughed. "Bill Marsteller, being a smart guy, knew that No. 1, he wasn't capable of doing this; and No. 2, he didn't want to be around for the fall. So they would hire a small public relations firm and they would give us the assignment."

After a meeting with Rockwell in his Homestead offices on North Lexington Avenue, Burson was hired on per diem because they didn't know how long it would take. The Korean War meant the delivery of the helicopter might be delayed.

"Al Rockwell was the kind of a client -- you still run into them every now and the -- if you go to work for them, they want you to know everything about their business. He wanted me to talk to his top six or eight executives, he wanted me to visit these plants."

Slow, steady growth

After about three months, they learned the delivery was going to be delayed.

"The good news was I knew that I could never satisfy this guy in the press coverage that he thought buying this helicopter deserved. The bad news was that if I wasn't working on the helicopter, the source of income was drying up."

Fortunately, he'd learned enough about the business to know Rockwell was about to roll out a new combination home workshop power tool. He offered to work on publicity for that. It took a little doing but he managed to get a three-page piece about that into Life magazine, and sales soared.

Not long after, Burson and Marsteller became partners in a new public relations firm.

"If it hadn't been for this Pittsburgh company that required some public relations services, undoubtedly my life would have been totally different. There would never have been Burson-Marsteller as such."

The partners added a Pittsburgh office in 1957, moving people into the Oliver building, Downtown. At various times, they worked for Gulf Oil, Koppers, Westinghouse and other major corporations here.

"The opportunities were really enormous. Pittsburgh, I think, next to Chicago, and New York, of course, had more corporate headquarters in it of the Fortune 500 companies. I think it ranked third, certainly fourth. There were a tremendous number of corporate prospects here, the kind of companies that we wanted to work for."

The public relations firm continued to grow slowly but steadily, adding offices around the country and abroad. Could it be done again today?

"You know, it could be done, but they would do it differently because people, I think, today are much more impatient. I never really believed in acquisitions. Had very few of them during the course of Burson-Marsteller's growth. We started most of our offices by sending in our own people.

"Today, if you look at Weber Shandwick, for example, if you put together everything they cobbled together and acquired, they're now as big as Burson-Marsteller. They did it in a very short period of time.

"It took us from 1953 -- we started March 1, 1953 -- until 1983 to become the largest public relations firm in the world."

Today, he said, the opportunities may be more in building good niche small and medium-sized businesses.

In 1979, the company agreed to become part of Young & Rubicam, which late last year became part of the WPP Group.

"There were two reasons. The first reason was that Burson-Marsteller was growing very rapidly and mainly overseas. We could not generate enough capital to finance that growth. In those days, the banks were not as willing to lend public relations firms and advertising firms money.

"The second reason was, even though we operated as two separate companies, it was the same ownership for the two. The advertising agency had hit a plateau. Bill Marsteller had retired at the end of 1979. I felt that we needed somebody to come in and help us regenerate the advertising business. Fact is, it didn't happen.

"But actually, I think the Burson-Marsteller relationship as far as Y&R goes was a very positive, constructive relationship."

'The public in general'

Burson didn't feel as though he lost control of the operation. The company met its financial obligations, satisfying the new owners.

"I don't think there's any evidence that advertising agencies that have owned public relations firms have tried to dictate on how the service should be delivered. If there's been any contention whatsoever, it's been, 'Why aren't you operating more efficiently so that you can make a better profit and meet your next goal?' "

The use of public relations has gone through many changes since those early days when he was intimately connected with Rockwell.

"The nature of the relationship between client and agency has changed. I don't think agencies and clients are as close to one another as they were. I think there's more of a supplier/vendor aspect to the relationship than it is counselor/partner."

But, Burson added, "I think there's evidence that things are changing back."

"You're finding more and more companies are controlling a number of agencies and the agencies that their people can hire. You know some companies that have a lot of different brands have a dozen or more agencies working for them.

"Somebody up in corporate is beginning to realize that, No. 1, that's hard to manage. Also, we aren't important to any of those people, so we should start thinking about saying we're going to have two agencies working for us. And we can be important to those agencies, get their best people, get their best thinking."

Burson founded his business mainly to help corporations raise awareness in the business community; but public relations is now very involved in consumer communications, too.

"Whereas 20 years ago, 25 years ago, our information was very limited to the business community, now you've got to think in terms of the public in general. Because the public is evaluating purchasing decisions on their perception on the behavior of the manufacturer, or even the parent company of the manufacturer.

"You know, it's amazing how a company like Procter & Gamble ... you can't go into a store and buy a P&G product, there's nothing labeled by P&G. Yet people know that Ivory soap is made by P&G."

PR of the Revolution

He expects demand for public relations services to grow in relationship with the public's awareness of the behavior of business. "I think social responsibility is the equivalent to the environmental movement of 10 or 15 years ago. I think more and more companies are going to be judged on their social responsibility."

As Burson works on his memoirs, he's been thinking about the business of molding people's perceptions.

"Public relations is as old as clans and tribes getting together and communicating and interacting with one another.

"The example that I use as one of the greatest public relations campaigns and one of the most effective was what preceded the American Revolution and what went on after the Revolution and the establishment of the republic of the United States of America."

"When the British sent out 900 people from Boston toward Concord and Lexington, within, like, the space of about 15 hours, there were almost 2,000 Colonists -- armed Colonists -- who appeared almost out of nowhere from these small villages and hamlets outside of Boston to oppose these 900 British regulars.

"What had happened was Paul Revere and Sam Adams and John Hancock and others had gone out once before and said, this is coming, we're being threatened, our liberties are being threatened. We've got to arm ourselves."

The founding fathers as PR guys? "Public relations has been going on for a long, long time. We just haven't called it that."