Insight and Points of View

Burson-Marstellers grundlægger Harold Burson fortæller om sit syn på virksomhedens fremtid:

The Holmes Report (March 26, 2007) has designated Burson-Marsteller “International Agency of the Year” for 2006 – an honor ascribed to us on previous occasions by Holmes and other media reporting on public relations/communications.

Holmes describes Burson-Marsteller as “perhaps the first truly international public relations agency.” Even though self-serving, we believe this is a fair assessment. Most certainly, we were first to think in terms of and plan for a global network, a risky –albeit daring – strategy for us at that time.

When we launched our first office in Europe -- Geneva, February 1961 -- the firm had yet to achieve a million dollars in revenues. But we had a vision that the then-nascent European Common Market would, in time, lead to a global market place abounding in opportunity for all manner of products and services – and an opportunity to serve large global clients.

A basic premise in our somewhat primitive business plan was that even the best known national brands and largest corporations in one country were largely unknown beyond their home borders. Actually, there were few truly global brands in the early 60s: Coca-Cola, Pan Am Airways, Rolls Royce, Chanel, Singer (sewing machines) come to mind. We felt this boded well for a public relations firm with a network of offices in the world’s most developed markets.

We realized early on that growth, whether in the U.S. or elsewhere, depended on providing extraordinary service to clients. In its first rating of public relations firms in 1986, the same Holmes Report described Burson-Marsteller as “the public relations firm against which all others are measured.” Our intention was always to maintain a single standard of service worldwide. We came up with the notion that we should be “seamless” -- that we should implant in every office and with every “Burson person” a “caring and a sharing” culture and a single worldwide Burson-Marsteller standard of excellence. It sounds corny, but it worked.

To assure the integrity and uniformity of both our culture and methodology, we decided that our expansion from one country and one continent to another should be mainly organic. Therefore, few B-M offices around the world were acquired as going businesses (with each of three major exceptions -- London, Seoul and India -- we had had long standing affiliations). We are unique in having grown our own offices -- a factor which contributes importantly to the “seamless” performance and reputation of our present 50 offices in 35 countries.

Another contributing factor to our “seamlessness” has been our internal training programs, formalized in the late 60s and continued through the years. These programs are at three levels: worldwide, regional and national/local. Literally thousands of B-M people from widespread locations have worked elbow-to-elbow with one another and developed their own individual regional and international networks. (A score or more inter-office marriages have resulted from our interoffice training meetings.)

Very early in our overseas venture we learned that transferring culture and methodology doesn’t work well with a “top-down” model. Rather, we learned the transformation came more quickly when we sprinkled our overseas offices with a few mid-level “stars” who knew both our business and our company. It is only natural that people prefer to emulate those with superior skills as opposed to being told what to do and how to behave.

The fact that we have so many multinational client assignments also contributes to our one-company culture regardless of office location. Each of our multiple-market clients is headed by a client leader who is responsible for overseeing and coordinating all activities for that client, whether regional or global. We have clients who employ us in two or three countries and others whom we represent in twenty or more. Each client has its dedicated and protected team website that serves as both a communications vehicle and a means of sharing information among each of the countries for which Burson-Marsteller is engaged.

It was our intention from the time of our first office outside the U.S. (actually Toronto in 1958) that every non-domestic office would, as soon as practicable, have local home-grown management and a staff of local nationals. We recognized our competition would include other international firms and strong local public relations firms and that local client management would be local nationals likely to be more receptive to working with consultants who shared their language and customs. After 45 years, we have accomplished our objective: almost every Burson-Marsteller office in the world is headed by a local national. Put another way, few – very few of our non-U.S. offices – are headed by Americans or whose senior management includes Americans. In France the language of our office French; in Japan the language of our office is Japanese; in Brazil the language of our office is Portuguese.

Today’s Burson-Marsteller international preeminence is a factor of both our longevity as an international business and the logic that drove our growth. During the 70s, we established ourselves in France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain; in the 80s we moved into Sweden and Norway and Denmark in the early 90s. And we were first to have an office in Moscow (1988) and the first to establish offices in the former countries dominated by the Soviet Union – Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.

On the other side of the world, 1973 was a landmark year for us. We opened for business in Hong Kong and Singapore in February, in Kuala Lumpur in July and Tokyo in November. Each of the four offices was profitable its first year. To complete coverage of the Asia/Pacific Region we opened offices in Sydney and Melbourne in 1980.

Although we entered the large Brazilian market in 1977 with an office in Sao Paulo and Puerto Rico in 1980, our expansion in Latin America lagged until the 90s, when we established a southern hemisphere headquarters in Miami. During the 90s and into the first decade of the 21 st Century we opened offices in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela and, most recently, Peru. By a large measure, we have the most comprehensive network of Latin American offices of any public relations firm.

Our entry in the Mid-East was also early – after the second gasoline crisis in 1980 we established a small coordinating office in Bahrain that was supported by a strong locally-owned network with offices in most of the Arab countries. Presently, we have a similar arrangement with another prominent regional public relations firm with headquarters in Dubai.

Nowadays, not unlike some of our clients, approximately half our total revenues are generated outside the United States. To a considerable extent, our ability to provide global service has driven our growth through the years. We have achieved our long standing objective to equip ourselves in a manner that permits us to provide uniformly superior service to our clients no matter where they require it.

 

Harold Burson