Posted on October 29, 2007
Few people can boast taking a company from making $100,000 a year to bringing in $300 million. Harold Burson can.
Burson, founder and CEO of Burson-Marsteller, the largest public relations agency in the world, visited JMU to discuss future concerns of the profession.
Numerous achievements were listed in Burson’s introduction such as receiving the Public Relations Society of America Gold Anvil Award in 1980, receiving the Alexander Hamilton Medal from the Institute of Public Relations in 1999 and being named Public Relations Professional of the Year by Public Relations News in 1977 and 1989.
Burson told two stories he said best exemplifies the use of public relations.
The first story involved his alma mater, the University of Mississippi. The chancellor of the campus decided to remove the Confederate flags from the football stadium, a long-standing tradition of the team. Burson visited the university to consult with students and professors for three days and determined that the general consensus was that everyone agreed that it was time for the flags to go.
Burson also visited the football coach to discuss the flags and discovered that the flags discouraged a significant number of black students from playing at Mississippi. Burson decided that the football coach would be the most efficient means of getting rid of the flags.
The coach was instructed by Burson to set up a press conference two weeks before the end of the season and announced that the flags would no longer be acceptable at games. The game following the press conference resulted in a 75 percent reduction in the number of flags and by the following game all of the flags were gone.
Burson described the situation as the greatest change in public opinion he had ever seen. He said that it was a dramatic example of changing very fixed ideas.
His second story involved the Economic Club of New York when Burson was asked to find a suitable speaker for the club’s Centennial Dinner.
The Civil Rights Bill and the women’s rights movement had generated the greatest impact on the way society operates today. Burson’s proposed speaker was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
While the process of getting the secretary to speak was strenuous, Burson wanted to show how in public relations alternate plans and improvisation is sometimes necessary.
Before concluding Burson discussed the future concerns of the P.R. industry. These concerns included there being no accepted definition of P.R., using communications as a descriptor, not focusing enough attention on the heritage and history of the business and the instruction content of the field.
“People do not have a full appreciation of public relations,” he said.
Burson ended with a comment on the ethics in business.
He said, “Good business decisions have to be good ethical decisions.”
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