Better than the Republicans

[blindpig]

"But, but, but they are a lot better than the Republicans!"

Spinning Hillary Centrist

From Sourcewatch

In May, 2007, the Nation magazine ran an insightful article into the relationship between Burson-Marsteller's top executive world-wide, Mark Penn, and Hillary Clinton. "As Hillary Clinton charges toward the Democratic nomination for President, her campaign has a coterie of influential advisers. ... But perhaps the most important figure in the campaign is her pollster and chief strategist, Mark Penn, a combative workaholic. ... Yet Penn is no ordinary pollster. Beyond his connections to the Clintons, he not only polls for America's biggest companies but also runs one of the world's premier PR agencies ."

From Spinning Hillary Centrist, The Nation, Ari Berman...

Burson-Marsteller is hardly a natural fit for a prominent Democrat. The firm has represented everyone from the Argentine military junta to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, in which thousands were killed when toxic fumes were released by one of its plants, to Royal Dutch Shell, which has been accused of massive human rights violations in Nigeria. B-M pioneered the use of pseudo-grassroots front groups, known as "astroturfing," to wage stealth corporate attacks against environmental and consumer organizations. It set up the National Smokers Alliance on behalf of Philip Morris to fight tobacco regulation in the early 1990s. Its current clients include major players in the finance, pharmaceutical and energy industries. In 2006, with Penn at the helm, the company gave 57 percent of its campaign contributions to Republican candidates.

A host of prominent Republicans fall under Penn's purview. B-M's Washington lobbying arm, BKSH & Associates, is run by Charlie Black, a leading GOP operative who maintains close ties to the White House, including Karl Rove, and was former partners with Lee Atwater, the political consultant who crafted the Willie Horton smear campaign used by George H.W. Bush against Michael Dukakis in 1988. Black regularly disparages the Clintons; he has called Hillary a "martyr figure" and said Bill "tearfully embraced...government preferences for homosexual lifestyle." In recent years Black's clients have included the likes of Iraq's Ahmad Chalabi, the darling of the neocon right in the run-up to the war; Lockheed Martin; and Occidental Petroleum. In the summer of 2005 he landed a contract with the Lincoln Group, the disgraced PR firm that covertly placed US military propaganda in Iraqi news outlets. The agreement, according to Intelligence Online, allowed the Lincoln Group to "tap into BKSH's extensive contacts in the Republican administration." When asked by The New Yorker if there was too much cronyism in Iraq, Black responded, "I just wish I could find the cronies."

As expected with such a lineup, B-M has a highly confrontational relationship with organized labor. "Companies cannot be caught unprepared by Organized Labor's coordinated campaigns," read the "Labor Relations" section of its website (until it was scrubbed after Mark Schmitt of The American Prospect quoted the language in March). It consults frequently with George Washington University professor Jarol Manheim, author of The Death of a Thousand Cuts: Corporate Campaigns and the Attack on the Corporation and Biz-War and the Out-of-Power Elite: The Progressive-Left Attack on the Corporation. And it lends help to some of the most controversial union-busting efforts in America.

...

Back in 2003 two large unions, UNITE (which later merged with HERE, the hotel and restaurant union) and the Teamsters, launched a major drive to organize 32,000 garment workers and truck drivers at Cintas, the country's largest and most profitable uniform and laundry supply company. Its longtime CEO, Richard Farmer, was a mega-fundraising "pioneer" for George W. Bush. Despite posting $3.4 billion in sales and $327 million in profits last year, the company had a record of overcharging consumers, denying workers overtime pay, keeping unsafe working conditions (an employee in Tulsa died recently when caught in a 300-degree drier) and using any means necessary to block the union drive. Management fired employees under false pretenses, according to worker complaints documented by the unions; vowed to close plants; and screened anti-union videos. A plant manager in Vista, California, threatened to "kick driver-employees with his steel-toed boots," according to a complaint UNITE HERE filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). To put a soft face on its harsh tactics, Cintas hired Wade Gates, a top employee in B-M's Dallas office, as its chief spokesman. Gates coined Cintas's shrewd response to labor: "the right to say yes, the freedom to say no," which has been repeated endlessly in the press. In a speech at the USC Gould School of Law last year, Gates outlined Cintas's strategy, calling for an "aggressive defense against union tactics." Says Ahmer Qadeer, an organizer for UNITE HERE: "It's the Burson influence that's made Cintas much, much slicker than they were." The unions have won two NLRB rulings against Cintas, but for four years the company has continued to resist the organizing campaign.

Link: Spinning Hillary Centrist, The Nation

Burson-Marsteller
From Sourcewatch...

Burson-Marsteller is the world's fifth largest PR company (Source: Council of PR Firms, 2002) and part of the WPP Group. According to a 2004 profile in The Hill, a Washington, DC newspaper, "This multinational PR behemoth has an active public-affairs practice led by Richard Mintz, who ran the media shop at the Department of Transportation during the Clinton administration. He also served as staff director for Hillary Clinton during the 1992 campaign. B-M has won awards recently for its work for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the "No on Proposition 54" campaign in California. Its public-affairs practice is bolstered by its affiliation with Direct Impact (grassroots marketing) and BKSH & Associates (lobbying)."

...

In April 2005, Jack O'Dwyer's Newsletter reported that Burson-Marsteller had joined with Quinn Gillespie & Associates to launch 360 Advantage, a public affairs shop filled with "key players in George W. Bush's successful presidential campaigns."

360 Advantage is headed by Russ Schriefer, who did advertising with the Bush/Cheney 2000 and 2004 campaigns and produced the 2004 Republican National Convention, and by Stuart Stevens, a "Bush adman and veteran political strategist." Schriefer and Stevens were also partners in the Stevens & Schriefer Group in Washington, DC, and have worked on presidential campaigns in the Czech Republic, Nigeria, the Philippines and Congo (Jack O'Dwyer's Newletter, Vol. 38, No. 17, April 27, 2005).

Burson-Marsteller, Sourcewatch

More from Spinning Hillary Centrist, The Nation, Ari Berman...:

Every election cycle Penn discovers a new group of swing voters--"soccer moms," "wired workers," "office park dads"--who happen to be the key to the election and believe the same thing: "Outdated appeals to class grievances and attacks upon corporate perfidy only alienate new consistencies and ring increasingly hollow," Penn has written. Through his longtime association with the Democratic Leadership Council, Penn has been pushing pro-corporate centrism for years. Many of the same companies that underwrite the DLC, such as Eli Lilly, AT&T, Texaco and Microsoft, also happen to be clients of Penn's.

...

Yet despite occupying such a divisive place in the Democratic Party and outsized role in the corporate world--and despite his company's close ties to Republican political operatives and the Bush White House--Penn remains a leading figure in Hillary's campaign, pitching the inevitability of her nomination to donors and party bigwigs. According to the New York Times, " Clinton responds to Penn's points with exclamations like, Oh, Mark, what a smart thing to say!" Politically, his presence means that triangulation is alive and well inside the campaign and that despite her populist forays, Hillary won't stray too far from the center. "Penn has a lot of influence on her, no doubt about it," says New York political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, who worked with Penn in '96. "He's not going to let her drift too far left."

More about Burson-Marsteller:

The public relations business is one of the fastest growing industries in the global market economy. In order to face perils like labor unions, organized consumer activists and environmental groups, governments and corporations have come to rely more on slick PR campaigns. The peril to popular democracy posed by PR firms should not be underestimated. Using the latest communications technologies and polling techniques, as well as an array of high-level political connections, PR flacks routinely "manage" issues for government and corporate clients and "package" them for public consumption. The result is a "democracy" in which citizens are turned into passive receptacles of "disinfotainment" and "advertorials" and in which critics of the status quo are defined as ignorant meddlers and/or dangerous outsiders.

...

On the human rights front, B-M has represented some of the worst violators of our age. These include:


* The Nigerian government during the Biafran war, to discredit reports of genocide.

* The fascist junta that ruled Argentina during the 70's and early 80's, to attract foreign investment.

* The totalitarian regime of South Korea, to whitewash the human rights situation there during the 1988 Olympics.

* The Indonesian government, which got into power through a CIA- sponsored bloodbath. (It should be pointed out, however, that B-M denies that it is handling the issue of genocide in East Timor)

* Ideological barriers are no object. B-M also represented the late communist Romanian despot Nicolae Ceaucescu.

* Other third world human rights violators that have been represented by B-M include the governments of Singapore and Sri Lanka.



Doesn't this bother the consciences of B-M's executives? Not at all. Commenting on his firm's work for Argentina's fascists, B-M founder Harold Burson said that "We regard ourselves as working in the business sector for clearcut business and economic objectives. So we had nothing to do with a lot of the things that one reads in the paper about Argentina as regards human rights and other activities".

...


For years B-M has been involved in major environmental issues all over the world, not hesitating to give polluters a helping hand when confronted by activist groups and/or government regulations. Many transnational corporations have turned to B-M for help in the creation of a pedantic, elitist and corporate-oriented brand of environmentalism. It is the hope of entrepreneurial sectors and neoliberal demagogues that this type of safe and harmless environmental activism will displace the more militant and agressive grassroots groups.

B-M's environmental services have benefited industrial polluters, such as the following:


* Babcock & Wilcox, when its nuclear power plant in Three Mile Island had its famous mishap in 1979.

* Union Carbide, to handle the public relations crisis caused by the Bhopal tragedy in 1984.

* Exxon, to counter the negative press coverage it got in the wake of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in 1989.

* Ontario Hydro, an industrial concern, headed by Earth Summit secretary general Maurice Strong, which is the biggest source of CO2 emissions in Canada. This corporation is currently selling nuclear reactors to Argentina and Chile.

* The Louisiana-Pacific (L-P) logging company, famous for its union- busting, clear cutting of old growth forests and support for anti- environmental front groups. L-P hopes to convince its employees and the public that ruralunemployment in North America is caused by environmental extremists and opressive government regulation and not by unsustainable logging practices or the relocation of s awmills to low-wage countries like Mexico.

* B-M formed the British Columbia Forest Alliance (BCFA), a Canadian front group which has L-P among its founding members. BCFA is campaigning against restrictions on logging and is actively work ing to smear and discredit environmentalists. Other BCFA members include Mitsubishi and Weyerhaueser.

* B-M is a key player in the nuclear industry lobby. According to Canadian journalist Joyce Nelson, B-M has for years "represented top nuclear power/nuclear weapons contractors such as General Electric, AT&T, McDonnell Douglas, Asea Brown Boveri and Du Pont. In fact, Canada's first Candu reactor sale to Argentina in the early 1970's was later renegotiated during the reign of the military junta, for whom Burson-Marsteller did an image-cleanup from 1976-1981". In addition to this, since 1993 B-M subsidiary Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly (see sidebar) has been representing Nordion International, a newly-privatised subsidiary of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., Canada's state-owned nuclear power company.

* B-M coordinated the oil industry's campaign to discredit and destroy president Clinton's proposal for a BTU tax.

* A B-M executive sits on the board of Keep America Beautiful, a front for the packaging and waste hauling industries that lobbies against mandatory recycling laws, especially the passage of a national bottle bill in the US.

* B-M's most powerful and influential 'environmental' client is the Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD), an eco-capitalist outfit founded by Swiss banker Stephan Schmidheiny. A leading theorist and advocate of neoliberal dogma and corporate environmentalism, Schmidheiny agressively combines entrepreneurship and statesmanship. He is a board member of NestlE9, and a director and shareholder (5% owner) of B-M client Asea Brown Boveri. BCSD's original task was to act behind the scenes at the 1992 Earth Summit, which was chaired by the current head of B-M client Ontario Hydro Maurice Strong, to neutralize and silence any voices critical of the irresponsible behavior of polluting corporations. In the words of Joyce Nelson, "With the able assistance of public relations giant Burson-Marsteller, a very elite group of business people (including B-M itself) was seemingly able to plan the agenda for the Earth Summit with little interference from NGO's or government leader s". Nowadays BCSD is advocating free markets and unfettered corporate activity as the only salvation of the environment. Its members include the CEO's of Asea Brown Boveri, Browning Ferris Industries, Ciba-Geigy, Dow Chemical, DuPont, BCFA member Mitsubishi, Maurice Strong's Ontario Hydro, Royal Dutch-Shell, and companies from Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Spain, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Thailand and Venezuela.



BURSON-MARSTELLER: PR FOR THE NEW WORLD ORDER
Carmelo Ruiz

Destroying Health Care

American and Canadian pharmaceutical and insurance companies that want to crack open the Canadian market are frustrated by the fact that Canadians are very happy with their health care system. Worse yet, more and more Americans, especially in Vermont, are now calling for the introduction of single-payer health insurance in their country--a step in the direction of a Canadian-style system. This presents a grave problem for neoliberal demagogues, since it exposes the basic conflict between capitalism and democracy.

Enter Burson-Marsteller's health care unit, whose staff includes "a medical doctor/physician; former FDA (Food and Drug Administration) commissioner; former hospital administrator; former pharmaceutical communications executives; former non-profit communications chiefs; grassroots specialists, and former reporters" according to the senior editor of O'Dwyer's newsletter, which monitors the PR business.

B-M has plenty of experience in matters of public health. On behalf of client Philip Morris, B-M created the National Smokers' Alliance (NSA) to fight against smoking restrictions. According to John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, the NSA "is a state-of-the-art campaign that uses full- page newspaper ads, direct telemarketing, paid canvassers, (toll free) numbers and newsletters to bring thousands of smokers into its ranks each week. By 1995 NSA claimed a membership of 3 million smokers". The NSA is headed by B-M vice-president Thomas Humber and its members include B-M executives Pierre Salinger and Kennetz Rietz, as well as Peter Kelly, senior partner of B-M subsidiary Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly (see sidebar). In addition to this, B-M was hired by the A.H. Robbins company when its Dalkon Shield IUD contraceptive injured thousands of women who used it, and it is now currently promoting the 'virtues' of Eli Lilly's anti-depressant wonder drug Prozac.

Selling NAFTA

In 1990 the Mexican government hired B-M to sell NAFTA to the American public, media and politicians. B-M subcontracted this job to one of its subsidiaries, The Brock Group (TBG), a consulting firm that has done work for American Express, Bell Atlantic, Bacardi, Toyota and the Taiwanese government. TBG is headed by former senator, Republican National Committee chairman, US trade representative and labor secretary William Brock. He was certainly qualified for the job. As US trade representative, Brock engineered the Caribbean Basin Initiative and the US-Israel Free Trade Agreement, and began the negotiations that would eventually culminate in the signing of the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement.

William Brock co-chairs the Multilateral Trade Negotiations (MTN) Coalition, which was founded in 1990 to 'educate' the public-- and lobby for--the now-completed Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The coalition's members include American Express, General Motors, IBM, General Electric, Cargill, Citicorp, Procter & Gamble and other companies and trade associations. According to Malaysian activist Martin Khor Kok Peng, the MTN Coalition had a big influence on the 1990 G-7 Summit meeting held in Houston, USA, in which GATT figured prominently. At the Houston Summit, MTN held a high- profile press conference and released a report by an 'eminent persons group' on world trade.


Monsanto and Burson-Marsteller Hire a Consumer Organizer

Quote:
Burson-Marsteller is hardly a natural fit for a prominent Democrat



Mark Penn at Work

Mark Penn is chief strategist for the Hillary Clinton campaign. This article explains how Penn uses bogus polling and other dirty tricks to manipulate pubic opinion and "sell" candidates and ideas. He is the man behind the PR campaign that created a false illusion, as far back as January, that Clinton was the "front runner" and had broad support with the public.

Coup D'etat in Venezuela: Made in the USA
The U.S.-designed Plan to Overthrow Hugo Chavez in the Days Following the Election
by Chris Carlson

In his article, "Coup D'etat in Disguise," Jonathan Mowat described how these "polls" work: "Penn, Schoen and Berland (PSB) has played a pioneering role in the use of polling operations, especially "exit polls," in facilitating coups. Its primary mission is to shape the perception that the group installed into power in a targeted country has broad popular support. ""...the deployment of polling agencies' "exit polls" broadcast on international television...give the false impression of massive vote-fraud by the ruling party, to put targeted states on the defensive."

That is, the goal is to either get enough support to sway the election in their favor, or, if that isn't possible, to give the impression that the elections were fraudulent and encourage the population to overturn them. The strategy has been so successful in overthrowing regimes, or installing the regimes that the U.S. prefers, that the operation has evolved into a blueprint to be used in countries around the world. Ian Traynor described it in the Guardian in November 2004 as follows:

"he campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavory regimes...The operation - engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience - is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people's elections"

...

Last week, Mr. Schoen, of Penn, Schoen & Berland, released the findings of his latest survey on the Venezuelan evening news. As expected, Penn's survey showed that Chavez's opposition, Manuel Rosales, was nearly tied in the polls with Chavez. Chavez, it showed, had only 48% support, and his opponent Manuel Rosales had gained significantly up to 42%. This poll is now being reported across all the major Venezuelan media, to a huge audience, showing that Rosales was gaining more and more everyday, and could possibly win. Mr. Schoen added his personal opinion, "The momentum is clearly with Rosales."(10)

With the help of the mainstream media, almost all of which is vehemently opposed to the popular president, these fake polls have reached a wide audience. All the newspapers, the major television channels, and internet news sites report the poll results as if they were true, valid, findings. They don't mention the fact that these findings are not supported by any other polling agency. Again, although the reality is that Rosales has almost no chance of winning in the December elections, much of the population now believes he will. The reality doesn't seem to matter, all that really matters is what the population believes. When their candidate loses by a large margin, it will be a difficult reality to deal with. If the opposition strategy works, it might be possible to produce large protests and even riots.

*************************************************************************************************


Global Leadership

Mark J. Penn, Worldwide President & CEO



Mark Penn is worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller and President of Penn, Schoen and Berland. As CEO of Burson-Marsteller, Mark oversees a global network of 94 offices and 1600 employees that brings world-class public relations to companies around the world. As President of PSB, a position he has held since 1975 when he was an undergraduate at Harvard, Mark focuses on providing research-based communications strategy to political figures, corporations and crisis situations.

Mark has been called "Master of the Message" by Time Magazine; "The king of polls" by the London Times; and an "incandescent intellect" by the New York Times. On his wall are notes saying "you were brilliant" from Tony Blair after his historic third win and "thanks" from Bill Clinton after his impeachment acquittal along with photos of Mark working with CEOs including Bill Gates and Bill Ford, Jr. The Washington Post, in "Politics and Policy by the Numbers" summed up his influence in the White House and the corporate boardroom as a "unique vantage point: adviser to the preeminent innovator of the past decade in the realm of politics, Bill Clinton, and the preeminent innovator in the realm of business and technology, Bill Gates."

The techniques applied to these political and corporate battles were honed from early major corporate experiences with AT&T, Texaco and others. In "The Guru of Small Things" the New York Times explains how he has combined innovative techniques of micro-targeting, issue-based messaging and visual message testing to win major corporate, marketing and political battles.

Today, Mark serves as strategic consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and CEOs on a wide range of image, branding and corporate reputation issues. His client relationships include Ford Motor Company, Merck, Verizon, BP, McDonald's and Microsoft. He has been a key adviser to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer since 1998, helping Microsoft affect a complete corporate turnaround from anti-trust scandal to Most Trusted Company (Wall Street Journal).

In 2007, Mark published a ground-breaking book, Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes that has been compared to The Tipping Point by Kirkus Reviews and has received praise from President Bill Clinton and Bill Gates.

Mark has helped to elect over 25 leaders in the United States, Asia, Latin America and Europe. Most recently, he served as advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair, helping achieve an unprecedented third term win for the Labour party in the United Kingdom. He is also well known for serving as President Clinton's pollster and political adviser for the 1996 re-election campaign and throughout the second term of the administration. Currently, Mark serves as a key strategic advisor to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. He has worked with Mrs. Clinton for over six years, since he ran the polling and messaging for her successful election to the US Senate in 2000.

Mark won the Pollster of the Year award, given every 4 years, in both 1996 and 2000, the top honor in his profession, from the American Association of Political Consultants. Mark has written for publications including the New York Times and the Washington Post, and has appeared frequently on networks including CNN and Fox News.

About Us >Global Leadership > Mark J. Penn

***************************************************************************************************

Issues & Advocacy Practice

Organizations face a barrage of challenges to their reputation, stability and freedom to operate. When tough issues arise, they can move markets, disrupt operations, create media firestorms and lead to crises that test even the most tightly-run and well-led institutions. The elections of 2007 further complicated the environment in which corporations and industries operate, with heightened scrutiny and aggressive regulatory reform creating a growing sense of vulnerability. Even those who have yet to feel the heat are thinking about what they need to do to be prepared—or to head off trouble beforehand.

To help our clients prevail in an ever-evolving – and often hostile – business and political environment, Burson-Marsteller has established a cross-functional, integrated team of professionals focused solely on the disciplines within issues management and advocacy communications. Linked with the resources of our family of government relations, grassroots advocacy, advertising and opinion research business units, the Issues & Advocacy Practice creates a powerful capability for companies and organizations to deal effectively with unanticipated crises, onerous regulatory decisions, complex litigation, media-based attacks, legislative threats and a whole host of other challenges that can adversely affect businesses and industries.

The Issues & Advocacy Practice spans Burson-Marsteller's network of U.S. offices, comprising a team of professionals whose diverse backgrounds include congressional offices, federal and state agencies, corporations, trade associations and nonprofits.

No other public relations and public affairs network can claim Burson-Marsteller's track record, global footprint, and depth of talent when it comes to successfully managing thorny issues.
Define your company—before your opponents define it for you. We can help.

Integrated into seamless client teams, our practitioners also provide specialized expertise in areas such as:

* Crisis & Litigation Communications

Key Contact:
Karen Doyne
Managing Director
Washington, D.C.
202-530-4523

* Labor Relations

Burson-Marsteller has developed a specialized capability surrounding labor relations communications, whether it be for companies engaged in contract renewal negotiations; companies facing strikes or lock-outs at negotiation impasse; companies facing the constant deluge of negative publicity and attacks through a "corporate campaign;" or companies pursuing more positive partnerships with labor organizations. We seek to position companies in a way that is first consistent with, and complementary to, their existing corporate reputation, brand promises and commitments, and then provide the company with greater control of its critical reputations and relationships, and therefore able to effectively pursue its strategic goals. For each company in its own unique situation, this requires a different approach.

* Corporate Social Responsibility

* Stakeholder Engagement

Our approach to stakeholder engagement is built on two pillars: relationships with NGOs that influence agendas affecting corporate operations and reputation; and a proven set of tools for identifying and engaging the NGOs and stakeholders that matter most.

Our NGO expertise stems from long-standing professional and personal relationships that our Corporate Responsibility team has with influential international organizations. We leverage these relationships to understand NGO advocacy and campaign methods and approaches; to develop communications strategies that address issues so that we can counsel clients on how to engage in productive dialogues and develop partnerships.

* Coalition & Issues Management

In addition, the Burson-Marsteller Issues & Advocacy Practice also offers a wealth of experience and expertise in industry-specific issue areas, such as:

* Food Safety

From the farm to the table, our experience with many agricultural and food clients has demonstrated that we must constantly strive to stay in touch with society's changing expectations. We help clients address new science, emerging threats, regulatory issues, NGO and media scrutiny, product recalls, food safety legislation and litigation.

Our experience shows that we can make a meaningful difference in meeting diverse stakeholder expectations: safeguarding public health, protecting product brand and organizational reputations, enhancing the safety of the food supply, as well as restoring markets and reassuring consumers following recalls and outbreaks of food-borne illness.

* Environment, Sustainability & Climate Change

Burson-Marsteller's team of environmental communications consultants includes professionals with strong experience in issues management, crisis communications and reputation management. They also have a strong understanding of the complex regulatory, political and social landscapes that influence how natural resources are protected, conserved and used.

Burson-Marsteller aligns a unique environmental knowledge and expertise with diverse communications capabilities to help clients inform and engage key stakeholders about sustainable business practices and environmental stewardship.

Climate Change Working Group Report

* International Affairs & Country Representation

The Burson-Marsteller International Affairs/Country Representation Team consists of seasoned communications professionals who have achieved a wide range of relevant experience in the reputation management, international affairs and media relations arenas. Members of this bi-partisan team have worked on behalf of numerous international clients, both in the U.S. and in-country. Furthermore, many members of our senior team have themselves served as U.S. government officials in the areas of national security, trade and commerce, and diplomatic positions, as well as on relevant Congressional Committees.

* Congressional Investigations and Testimony Support

Burson-Marsteller's Congressional Investigations team is comprised of former Capitol Hill staffers, political insiders and former journalists. We have a profound understanding of the Hill and bring that expertise to you. We will help you anticipate, plan and prepare for congressional hearings and investigations that affect your organizations and industries, as well as navigate through the political and legal and legislative process on Capitol Hill. This service is focused on preparing clients for the communication challenges surrounding government oversight, regulation and compliance.

* Trade and Development

Burson-Marsteller enjoys a long, rich background of trade communications. Applying a broad range of public relations expertise to complex trade issues, the firm's experience includes a number of high-profile cases and negotiations, from helping pass NAFTA to reducing U.S. and Canadian barriers to lumber sales. Burson-Marsteller has helped public and private clients alike communicate their point of view on Capitol Hill legislation or White House regulation.

* Fundraising Communications

Burson-Marsteller leverages its cadre of experts from multiple disciplines, extensive internal resources and strong external alliances to support high-end, multi-discipline fundraising and capital campaigns. We use a broad and effective array of communications techniques to generate awareness and support for fundraising programs for government and nonprofit organizations.

****************************************************************************************************

Issues & Advocacy


The Real Case Against Mark Penn

By Mark Schmitt

I predicted a few weeks ago that we would start to see more stories about the bizarrely conflicting roles of one Mark Penn, who holds down the job of "Worldwide President and CEO" of the fifth-largest public relations firm in the universe (Burson-Marsteller) while also apparently being the de facto campaign manager for Senator Clinton's presidential bid. Ari Berman of the Nation has now opened the bidding with a superb article revealing much of what it actually means to be Worldwide President and CEO of Burson-Marsteller, including presiding over more than one Republican lobbying operation and a union-busting outfit that was once prominently featured on the Burson-Marsteller website but was quickly given the "Commissar Vanishes" treatment after I mentioned it in passing. I wasn't actually that interested in Penn's conflicts of interest as in the nature of his advice and his polling, and its influence on American politics. (I'm told that Berman will have more about Penn-as-pollster in the print edition of the Nation.)

...

There is another kind of polling that can be useful to campaigns and which appears to be Penn's specialty, which tries to understand the population by breaking it down into different groups based on demographics and values. This can be hugely revealing and extremely valuable. The Pew Research Center's periodic studies of "Political Typology" are a premiere example of this work, creating categories such as "Upbeats" and "Pro-Government Conservatives" that generally share attitudes on policy and have much in common demographically. Such an analysis is highly complex, as you essentially put all the data together and try to find natural "clusters" of demographics and values that emerge, trying not to impose categories on the data. You can't do it without a fairly large sample size (2,000 in the Pew poll) and a long questionnaire. Pollster Stan Greenberg did a similar analysis, explained most fully in his book, The Two Americas, in which he created such memorable categories as "F-You Boys" -- poorly educated white men under 50, a key part of the Bush base. If these categories are real and robust, it can help a political strategist figure out how to construct a majority -- for example, if you know you're going to capture very few of the "F-You Boys," then what do you need from other categories?

When Penn markets categories such as "soccer moms" and "office park dads," he seems to be doing the same kind of analysis. But it's hard to know, because unlike almost any other Democratic pollster, he never shows his work. Indeed, my first criticism of Penn was here in TPM Cafe last July, responding to an op-ed he co-wrote with James Carville making broad assertions such as that "Democratic and even independent women are thrilled with the idea" of Senator Clinton running for president, all without a single piece of data to support them. It is telling to compare the web sites of Penn, Schoen and Berland and that of Greenberg's firm, Greenberg, Quinlan & Rosner: Both firms do plenty of work that is proprietary, and both have corporate clients. But Greenberg's site is full of actual data -- the link above goes to a page with 192 reports on U.S. politics, eleven since the beginning of this year alone! Penn's site has nothing; a link to "read samples of our thinking" goes to a page with links to those same data-free op-eds! In short, we have no way of knowing whether Penn's demographic analysis of the electorate is as rigorous as Pew's or Greenberg's or whether he, if you'll forgive me some technical jargon, pulls it out of his ass. (see update below)

Penn also makes a particular use of his political typology, which is to declare that a certain voter category of his own devising is "the key" to the election because it could go either way: soccer moms, office park dads, wired workers, etc., or in his corporate work, "Mom-fluentials." Even if the category is firmly defined, and even if it is a "swing" category, that form of analysis rests on two other assumptions: That almost all other demographic categories are not swingable, and that the electorate cannot be expanded -- that is, that non-voters cannot be made voters. But neither assumption is justified: As I argued last fall, Karl Rove showed that the Republican base could be expanded, and so can the Democratic base, and in 2006, virtually every demographic category increased its Democratic vote significantly. To define a particular group as key is to deny those other possibilities, and in doing so, leads to a particular narrowing brand of politics focused exclusively on the concerns of the group defined as "key," which in Penn's case is reliably the upper half of the middle class.

In fact, when elections are as tight as they have been recently, any group can be defined as "key." It doesn't have to be a 50/50 swing vote group. In fact, in 2002, when Penn argued that "office-park dads" (white suburban men 25-64) are "the key swing voter that the party needs in order to win the next election," he was actually highlighting a reliably Republican group, acknowledging that, "Democrats don't need to win office park dads outright...We just need to fight for our share." Sure, but using that kind of logic, any group can be declared the "key swing voter": white evangelicals, atheists, F-You Boys, unmarried women, union members or non-union members, etc. A group voting 10% Democratic could go to 20%; a group voting 80% Democratic could go to 90. The choice is entirely arbitrary.

And that fact proves Ari Berman's conclusion that Penn's choice of categories has little to do with the actual data and everything to do with his presumptions going in -- populism doesn't work, don't criticize corporations -- which in turn have a delightfully precise correspondence with the interests of the clients of the firm of which Penn is Worldwide President and CEO. And that's why neither Senator Clinton, the people with good sense in her campaign, labor leaders or other Democrats should accept lobbyist Howard Paster's explanation to Berman that Penn's corporate and anti-union clientele is "part of a whole 'nother life we lead."

****************************************************************************************************



Blackwater knows it has a problem

Erik Prince and the other Republican luminaries at the helm of the world's largest and best armed and richest and best connected private, for-profit army, they know they have a problem.

I don't think they see themselves as having a moral problem. They wouldn't be in this business in the first place if they did. We know they don't have a financial problem, that's for sure. It looks like they probably won't have a legal problem, after all (unbelievable as it may seem). It is literally impossible for them to have a political problem since they have hired so many Republican Party power brokers that the Republican Party is starting to look like a wholly-owned subsidiary of Blackwater, rather than the other way around.

No, the problem that Blackwater has is actually an image problem. A branding problem.

And when the evilest corporations in the whole world have an image problem, they hire professional help. They hire Burson-Marsteller.

When Philip Morris, for example, needs helps with its corporate image, they call Burson-Marsteller.

When Entergy Nuclear wants you to not think about their cooling towers collapsing on their nuclear power plant in Vermont, they call Burson-Marsteller.

When Three-Mile Island happened in 1979, Babcock and Wilcox, they called Burson-Marsteller.

The Bhopal chemical disaster in India 20 years ago? Union Carbide called Burson-Marsteller.

Three days after 9/11 the government of Saudi Arabia called Burson-Marsteller.

Terrifying Romanian dictator Nicolai Ceausescu? You guessed it: Burson-Marsteller.

When a military junta overthrew the government of Argentina in 1976, who did the generals call? Burson-Marsteller.

The government of Indonesia, accused of genocide in East Timor? Quick, someone look up the number for Burson-Marsteller.

Now Burson-Marsteller has their newest marquee public relations client: Blackwater.

You can kinda see why it's a little bit gross that the CEO of Burson-Marsteller is Hillary Clinton's pollster and chief campaign strategist, Mark Penn.

You can kinda see why that is a little disgusting...

Rachel Maddow

*************************************************************************************************

What's Wrong with: Burson-Marsteller?

Burson Marsteller (BM) is a large and powerful public relations company which is adept at creating a positive image for corporations involved in unethical business practices including human rights violations, environmental destruction and animal-testing. Many of these companies have faced public scrutiny and even convictions for their various activities.

'Crisis Management'

"When is a disaster not a disaster? When it turns into a business opportunity... With good crisis management, a company can even ride the bad publicity of multiple deaths and come out smelling of roses." - Pat Anderson, writing in the professional journal Marketing Week, 22/4/94.

Disasters do happen. The best we can hope for is to learn from experience. This necessitates a serious debate afterwards, and to be effective such a debate needs to be balanced. Corporations that spend vast amounts on post-disaster PR are disrupting that crucial debate and evading responsibility. BM prides itself on being the leading 'crisis management' PR company. It has done the PR for the following disasters:

In India in 1984, for US company Union Carbide when its pesticide plant in Bhopal leaked more than 40 tonnes toxic gas. 2000 people were killed instantly; up to 15,000 have died since as a result of the disaster, and hundreds of thousands are suffering lung, eye and gastric complaints. Tuberculosis incidence in Bhopal is 3 times the Indian average. Following BMs work, the Indian Supreme Court dropped all charges of manslaughter against Union Carbide, although safety mechanisms at the plant were appallingly inadequate. The company has now left India, leaving most of the responsibility with the Indian government.

In 1979, when Babcock and Wilcox's nuclear reactor failed at Three Mile Island, the worst nuclear accident ever in the US. There are still over 2,000 lawsuits pending.4

For the Exxon Corporation, following the Exxon-Valdez disaster in Alaska, one of the most devastating oil spillages the world has ever seen.

In 1995, for Occidental Petroleum, Dow Chemicals and Shell in a legislation battle in California. These chemical corporations are trying to avoid new legislation that would force them to clean the local water supplies of DBCP, a soil fumigant pesticide that causes testicular cancer. 5

Working with Disreputable Companies.

Burson-Marsteller's corporate clients include :

BP Chemicals - In 1992, it was found that BP's Hull facility discharges twice the level of methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) - a chemical which can cause genetic damage, foetal damage or birth defects at unsafe levels of exposure - into the water than the total amount of MEK released in the United States.

Kerr McGee - owners of a uranium mine in the Navajo Nation, New Mexico. Accused of paying low wages and not informing the workers about the hazardous effects of uranium. Deaths are being recorded every month.

Malaysian Timber Industry Development Council - has felled vast areas of tropical rainforest, particularly in the states of Sarawak and Sabah, threatening the livelihoods of the indigenous peoples who lived there. BM has been hired to "repel falsehood and lies spread by evil-minded environmentalists." 7However, even the pro-business Malaysian Government has reported that 5 states have over-logged8; and although the International Tropical Timber Organisation warned the loggers in 1990 to cut their output to 9m m3/yr it has remained at 16-19m; and at the present rate the primary forest will be finished in 7-8 years9.

Monsanto and Eli Lilly - both companies produce the growth hormone BST to increase milk yields in cattle. It has been criticised for risk of infection in the cows, the fact that there is already a milk surplus, and unknown effects of this hormone on human beings. Acting on this concern, state legislators in Wisconsin, Minnesota, California and Vermont attempted to enforce labelling of milk produced with, and containing, this hormone. Their efforts were thwarted by Burson-Marsteller acting on behalf of these companies.10

Pfizer - a pharmaceutical company accused in 1990 by the US Generic Pharmaceutical Industry of fraudulent and deceptive practices for its failure to report severe side effects of its Feldene drug before it obtained US approval. Listed by the Multinational Monitor as one of the ten worst companies in 1988 for supplying faulty heart-valves. At least 394 of these valves ruptured killing 252 people by 1990. The company has also conducted extensive tests on animals, was listed by a US group as one of the top fifteen corporate contributors to global pollution based on 1987 figures and had one of its plants listed by Greenpeace as one of the ten worst polluters in the South East of England.

SmithKline Beecham - A pharmaceutical and research company which, in the year to March 1991, exceeded its toxic waste discharge quota into the rivers and sea more than 30 times. The company also owns its own animal testing facilities and has been accused of unnecessary cruelty in housing its animals.

Unilever - food, chemical and household goods manufacturer. Implicated in pollution of rivers in the UK and convicted for water pollution offences between 1/9/89 and 31/8/91. Owner of Birds Eye Walls - a food manufacturer which admitted in 1991 to annually importing 30,000 tonnes of beef from Brazil (where much grazing land is felled rainforest). In June 1989, 87 workers at the plant in Sao Paulo, Brazil were fired for occupying the plant in an attempt to achieve better pay and conditions.

Other controversial companies which have recently retained BM include:

Boots, Nestle, British Nuclear Fuels, Philip Morris, Coca-Cola, Proctor & Gamble, Ford Motor Co.,Rhone-Poulenc, General Electric, Rorer, Glaxo-Wellcome, Scott Paper, Grand Metropolitan, Scottish Nuclear, J Sainsbury, Shell.

Also, BM was hired by the Argentinian military junta led by Gen. Jorge Videla, which seized power in a coup d'_tat in 1976, to improve the country's "international image, especially for fostering foreign investment ... through projecting an aura of stability for the nation, its government and its economy". During Videla's reign, 35,000 people 'disappeared' and thousands of political prisoners were tortured. Videla is now serving a life sentence for murder.-

In 1996, BM was hired by the Indonesian government, which has one of the worst human rights records in the world and has been widely condemned for committing genocide in East Timor.13

Forming Industry 'Front Groups'

Increasingly the companies in an industry are uniting to form front groups to influence public opinion and legislation. These groups often give themselves 'green' sounding names: while pretending to show their concern and thus make a serious contribution to the environmental debate, they are in fact simply furthering the interests of the companies funding them. Indeed the aim is usually to relax environmental standards in order to cut their costs.

In the early '90s, Burson-Marsteller was instrumental in setting up the Business Council for Sustainable Development (BCSD), whose members include Chevron, Volkswagen, Ciba-Geigy, Mitsubishi, Dow Chemicals, Du Pont and Shell.14 Their press release said: "In a major new initiative on the future development and use of the world's natural resources, over 40 top world business leaders have joined forces in the form of an international organisation to propose new policies and actions on the sustainable development of the earth's environment."15

The BCSD was headed by Stephen Schmidheiny, a Swiss billionaire industrialist; and also a close friend of the secretary-general of the UN council on environment and development (UNCED). Substantial representations were made by the BCSD to UNCED's 1992 Earth Summit in Rio; with the result that proposals drawn up by the UN's own centre for trans-national corporations - concerning the environmental impact of these large companies, and issues of corporate responsibility and accountability - were not discussed or even circulated to delegates.16

In Europe, BM set up the Alliance for Beverage Cartons and the Environment, in 'defence of the beverage carton against environmental and regulatory pressures'. Its purpose is to make disposable cartons look environmentally friendly, and is sponsored by packaging interests such as Tetra Pak, Elopak, Bowater (now called REXAM) and Weyerhauser.17

In the US, BM represents the Fur Information Council in its multi-million campaign to combat 'animal extremists'.18

In Canada, the timber industry paid BM $1million to set up the British Columbia Forest Alliance, which poses as a forest protection movement.

Burson-Marsteller's Methods

MEDIA: As a PR firm, Burson-Marsteller obviously has a lot of friends in the media. Anyone with enough money (eg. large corporations) thus gets easy access through BM to public opinion, while those who have concerns other than the pursuit of money (eg. victims of industrial disasters) find it much harder to get their view across.

BM is a joint partner with Independent Television News (ITN) in the ownership of Corporate Television Network, which produces video press releases for corporate clients. As ITN is actually a media news service, its venture with BM makes a mockery of the notion of independent media.21

LOBBYING: Described by the Observer as 'compromising the independence of all-party groups', BM has had a great deal of involvement in putting commercial interests inside the Palace of Westminster. When a group of businessmen recently decided to throw their weight behind a campaign to abolish British Summer Time, they naturally hired BM. Within weeks, BM had become the administrative secretariat of the supposedly 'independent' Daylight Extra All-Party Group, and were using its name to drum up support among MPs for a Private Member's Bill. They eventually failed.22

SUMMONING 'GRASSROOTS' SUPPORT: Through use of strategic contacts, BM creates the appearance of popular support for its campaigns. In blocking the BST legislation (Eli Lilly and Monsanto, above), BM formed a coalition of businessmen, lobbyists, farmers, vets, executives of biotechnology companies, and so on. Faced with a constant barrage of letters, petitions and media actions, the legislators had no choice but to back down. Burson-Marsteller's control of both the media and key decision-makers is worrying, particularly because it is not surprising.

HIRING THIRD PARTIES: BM has also been accused of paying academics to write articles supporting its campaigns, without of course declaring their interests.

Specialisation in Environmental Issues

To quote BM's own literature: "When you need help on environmental issues, you need environmental professionals... Burson-Marsteller offers a worldwide environmental team. Issue experts. Lobbyists. Community relations counsellors. Technical advisors and media specialists." At $18m per year, BM has a larger income from dealing with environmental issues than any other PR firm.2

***************************************************************************************************

Is This How Mark Penn is Going to Sell Hillary Clinton to Single Women Voters?
Bella DePaulo

Remember "soccer moms"? Mark Penn coined that term during Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign, and he's proud of it. I cringe at the condescension of some of these cutsie appellations, but hey, the man does have some considerable successes to his name. And now he is the chief strategist in Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. So what, I wondered, might he have to say about the demographic that stepped into the spotlight when soccer moms got old - single women?

"Sex-Ratio Singles" are the first of the "microtrends" described in Penn's new book (written with E. Kinney Zalesne). Penn asks readers to think about how awful it feels to be left out, as, for example, when you are the only one not invited to a wedding. Single women, he claims, are left out of marriage. He concedes that some opt out, but then goes on to focus on those who flock to dating web sites, end up discouraged, then wonder what's wrong with them.

Not to worry. "There is nothing wrong with single women that a few more heterosexual men wouldn't fix," says Penn. See, the real problem is the sex ratio. "There are too few straight men for all the straight women," so when the music stops in the game of musical chairs he thinks we are playing, at least 3% of women have nowhere to sit. Poor us - we have to stand on our own two feet!

Penn, though, thinks that some single women have found a mighty nice consolation prize: "It is possible," he says, "that the unfavorable sex ratio, discouraging as it is in some respects, has encouraged women to excel elsewhere." We've created another microtrend - "Wordy Women" - as we pursue professions such as journalism, law, and public relations. Single women are also increasingly likely to buy their own homes.

We may be successful, but Penn is not giving up on us. Those guys we snubbed in college? Well, a decade later, when we are still single, "the balding guy with the solid job, and the reasonably good fatherhood potential, starts looking kind of hot."

*************************************************************************************************

Trending Towards Inanity
Mark Penn’s new book, Microtrends, is so epically awful that it could take the entire polling industry down with it
By Ezra Klein

First, a bit of full disclosure: Unlike everybody else in Washington, I have never met Mark Penn. This, I am assured, is to my enduring discredit, as he’s apparently a lovely individual, and if I only knew him, I would understand that his protection of a union-busting division within Burson-Marsteller, the PR firm of which he is the CEO, isn’t evidence of anti-union feelings at all. Nor is Penn’s ceaseless advocacy for a cautious, hawkish, pro-corporate, don’t-rock-the-boat Democratic Party a function of his beliefs, corporate background or clients. Instead, it’s merely “The Numbers.” Indeed, nothing Penn says or does can be questioned, because he’s just there to give us The Numbers. His personal thoughts are immaterial.

At the same time, his personal thoughts matter. As the Washington Post recently reported: “In the four months since Clinton officially became a candidate, Penn has consolidated his power, according to advisers close to the campaign, taking increasing control of the operation. Armed with voluminous data that he collects through his private polling firm, Penn has become involved in virtually every move Clinton makes, with the result that the campaign reflects the chief strategist as much as the candidate.” Even there, though, the Penn mystique persists: Penn’s power, we’re told, comes from his “voluminous data,” not his opinions. To argue with Penn is to argue with The Numbers. And you’re not against Numbers, are you?

That’s the Penn defense, and he and his friends have long stuck to it. “Mark is somebody who is very, very comfortable with quantification,” enthused Doug Schoen, his polling partner of over 30 years. “He is very comfortable with numbers.” It is this reputation that, so far as I can tell, Mark Penn has written Microtrends to dispel. Unlike most pollsters, Penn never releases his raw numbers, only his analysis. So we must take it on faith that his methodology is rigorous, his polls accurate and his interpretations fair. This book is our first opportunity to observe, at length, how adroitly Penn handles raw data. And the answer is stunning, even to a doubter like me. Mark Penn cannot handle numbers. If this book were turned in as the final to an entry-level statistics class, Penn would not only be failed, but the professor might well retire in shame.

...

All this is in service of his concept that “microtrends” now govern our world: “It takes 1 percent of people making a dedicated choice—contrary to the mainstream’s choice—to create a movement that can change the world,” Penn writes. Why 1 percent? Who knows? Penn doesn’t stick to it himself. Sometimes, it’s one-tenth of one percent, as in his al Qaeda example, or 10 percent, as with lefties, or sometimes it’s the microtrend of—I kid you not—the tens of millions of Americans who moved to the suburbs in the 20th century. Toward the book’s end, Penn says the “magic of the 1 percent threshold” is that “ten people with bazookas can overcome 1,000 people with picket signs, but they can’t overcome 10,000 people with picket signs.” Chew on that one, grasshopper.

As microchapter after microchapter passed, reviewing this book began to feel like dropping a grenade into a barrel of fish. But Microtrends is illuminating. Pollsters occupy a uniquely powerful space in American political discourse: They bring science to elections. Armed with heaps of raw data, they elevate their opinions into something altogether weightier: Conclusions. When an organization sends out a press release saying the organization is right, it’s ignored. When a pollster sends out a poll showing the electorate agrees, ears in Washington perk up.

The enterprise has always been dodgy. Populist pollsters reliably discover that the electorate thirsts for more populism. Conservative pollsters routinely discover a small government consensus pulsing at the heart of the body politic. When the libertarian Cato Institute commissioned a poll of the electorate, they found—shockingly—that the essential swing vote was made of libertarians. Remarkably, whenever a politician or self-interested institution releases a poll, the results show a symmetry between the attitudes of the pollster’s employer and those of the voters. But Penn’s book shines light on this phenomenon: If he is the pinnacle of his profession, then the profession uses numbers as a ruse—a superficial empiricism that obscures garden-variety hackery. And that’s a trend worth worrying about.

***************************************************************************************************

Bogus Polling, Mark Penn, the DLC, and Clinton's Early "Lead"

As early as last January, the DLC was using Penn's bogus polling, tailored to support a deceptive marketing campaign, to create the illusion that Clinton had an early lead and was the favorite for the Democratic party presidential nomination. Or at least that is the inevitable conclusion that any careful observer should reach by connecting the dots here.

Political Insider from January 20, 2007, written by an anonymous friend of James Carville, "Helvidius."

Clinton Campaign Memo

Pollster Mark Penn released a memo showing how his client, Sen. Hillary Clinton, can win the 2008 presidential race.

People are always asking, can Hillary Clinton win the presidency?

Of course she can. In many of the polls out today, she is already winning.

She has national ratings that are higher than the winning presidential candidates of the last two decades had on Election Day and beats or statistically ties the leading Republican presidential candidates in most recent polls. A December Newsweek poll even had her beating Sen. John McCain by 7 points.

The people who have come to know Hillary the best love her the most. Hillary won a huge victory in New York, with 64 percent of the vote, after getting 83 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary. In addition to her strong base in the city, she won over the highly Republican areas in upstate NY, where she has been strong since 2000, and went up 17 points this election in the Republican-leaning NYC suburbs. New Yorkers reaffirmed their support of her in her reelection, and she won 37 of the counties won by George Bush in the last election.

James Carville and I wrote a piece in 2006 for the Washington Post about how and why Hillary Clinton can win. Every one of the arguments we cited there are even more true today. Hillary Clinton has surged in the polls since the election this November. And women constitute a huge "X factor" in this upcoming election. More than 54 percent of the general election voters will be women, and many -- particularly those in the younger generation -- believe it is about time this country had its first woman president. And they believe Hillary is the right choice.

***************************************************************************************************

Damage Control!!!!

Whew!! That didn't take long.
Clinton responds on Blackwater

From communications director Howard Wolfson:

Mark Penn did no work on the Blackwater account. Burson has cut its ties to Blackwater, and that was the right thing to do. Mark is and remains a valuable member of our team. Sen. Clinton believes Blackwater must be held accountable for its actions and has laid out a detailed proposal to sharply reduce the number of contractors employed by the federal government by 500,000. She has repeatedly stated her concern that such contractors are not as accountable as federal employees.


From the Penn, Schoen and Berland website:

Crisis Management

Over the last three decades, PSB has advised Fortune 500 CEOs and heads of state through some of the highest profile political and corporate crises around the world. Through that experience we have developed a highly efficient crisis management process for using research to ensure that every move you make, during times when even the smallest move matters, will be the most effective. Our crisis management process involves three basic steps:

1. Before the Crisis, we use our proprietary war gaming research to project how a potential crisis might arise and what impact it will have, and then to play out how events will unfold differently depending on what responsive strategy we use.

2. During the Heat of the Crisis, we conduct flash polls of the key audiences to determine how well we are standing up to the negative messaging and how we need to continue evolving our response in light of how things are unfolding. This is the defense phase of crisis work.

3. In the Aftermath of the Crisis, we work on rehabilitation – that is, moving onto offense to recapture any ground we have lost.

The net impact is a crisis management process that helps you manage your way through the events and recover from them as quickly as possible.

*************************************************************************************************

Watch them in action...

"Public Affairs: Marrying High-Touch Influence with High-Tech Channels to Win Hearts and Minds"

Each day, elected and regulatory officials make decisions that could jeopardize a company's or industry's competitiveness or complicate a non-profit foundation's mission. Burson-Marsteller's Public Affairs professionals serve as trusted advisors to our clients, helping them build reputations and influence in the world's power centers, as well as navigate intensive, short-term policy battles. Our global Public Affairs network has the people, relationships, and expertise to help our clients achieve their public policy and business objectives by shaping the decision-making process -- in state capitals across the United States, Washington, D.C., Brussels, and other major capitals around the world.

Our approach integrates the best of traditional public relations and public education with state-of-the-art digital communications tools to deliver the right message, through the right messenger, to the right people, at the right time. We make your story personally relevant and compelling to each targeted audience segment, and we win the competition for that audience's hearts and minds by reaching them multiple times, through multiple "trusted sources." We deliver against your business goals and gauge our performance based on metrics consistent with those goals.

Our strategic thinking, our relationships with influentials, and our unparalleled execution of public affairs campaigns have been tapped by a wide range of clients, including industry and professional associations, corporations, nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations, and government agencies. For more information on our Public Affairs specialties, please visit our Government and Energy pages.

Our network: built on our people

Burson-Marsteller's global Public Affairs network is built on the experience of our seasoned communications professionals, many of whom have served in high-level government capacities at the local, state, and national levels, or in the news media. In cities around the globe, our people are well-connected with traditional influencers, including government officials and operatives, influential journalists, and non-governmental organizations. At the same time, our professionals are well-versed in influencing online influencers, an essential component to almost any winning public affairs strategy.

Areas of expertise: an integrated public affairs approach

Burson-Marsteller's Public Affairs professionals know that a successful campaign is about more than media clippings and Web site hits; it is about driving desired behavior. We leverage the right combination of communications tools to educate and motivate each target audience, and we integrate them into a seamless whole campaign with greater impact than the sum of its parts. Our areas of expertise span both "off-line" and online communications, and include:

* Public education
* Social marketing
* Stakeholder outreach and engagement
* Multi-cultural and multi-lingual outreach
* Partnerships and ally development
* Grass-tops and grass-roots mobilization
* Media training
* Media relations

So, whether it's introducing the redesigned U.S. currency around the world, repositioning Hong Kong as a global city, or explaining energy deregulation to every consumer in Texas, Burson-Marsteller knows how to design and execute successful public education and social-marketing campaigns for public- and private-sector clients. For examples of these campaigns and more, please take a look at our case studies.

Burson-Marsteller offers the "total package"

In addition to the global public affairs reach of the Burson-Marsteller network, the Public Affairs Practice offers clients the expertise of:

* BKSH & Associates − Ranked by Fortune as one of Washington, D.C.'s, top government-relations companies, BKSH & Associates provides lobbying in all 50 states, as well as in Brussels and other European capitals.

* Direct Impact − Considered America's leading grassroots mobilization firm, Direct Impact has an unmatched network of field operatives throughout the United States who are ready to assist clients recruit and train allies and champions.

* Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates − With almost 30 years of research-based market and political experience, Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates is a leading research and strategic communications firm that brings the lessons learned on the campaign trail into the boardroom, providing its clients with strategic, actionable recommendations to help them win in the most competitive situations.

Interactive Reputation Management

Media is transforming. For many years, commercial and print media were the main medium for public communications. Today, new technologies and the rise of user-generated media (UGM) is creating an increasingly complex communications environment, and one in which the individual voice is increasingly amplified and trusted. Meanwhile, the corporate voice is struggling to remain relevant and be heard.

Burson-Marsteller advises companies and governmental organisations on how to understand and adapt to this challenging new communications environment, and develops communications strategies that take into account the increasing importance of UGM and its varying relationships with traditional media and wider audiences. We help organizations adapt in an environment where not participating has greater risks than participating.


* Online monitoring: tracking, analysing and reporting online conversations about your company or brand; providing early warning about potential issues

* Online research: online corporate and consumer research, polling and testing; identifying online influencers and e-fluentials

* Digital communications strategy: benchmarking and reviewing existing websites, press rooms and other online resources; identifying trends and making recommendations

* User-generated media strategy: assessing existing UGM landscape and activities; identifying opportunities and risks; shaping UGM strategies and programs for engaging external and internal audiences

* Online PR: online blogger & influencer relations; mobilising online advocates and evangelists; creating conversations; press release search engine optimisation

* CEO and executive positioning: assessing existing online exposure and identifying opportunities for corporate leaders to exploit digital technologies externally and internally

* Crisis & issues management: helping prepare for and support potential crises through online risk assessment; procedure guidelines; online outreach and dark sites

* Internal communications: helping clients understand how employees are using digital technologies; assessing the effectiveness of digital communications and e-training



Huh?

[meganmonkey]

1. Uh....

K & R
:hide:

[saracat]

2. And this is the person advising a potential Democratic President? And Hillary supporters have NO

problem with this man? They think this is "nothing" ? I say read this and weep. This person is a total neocon and was for Iraq "before " the war.What does that tell you about Hillary? And what does this say about her relationship to the neocons? And some say she won't appoint neocons? She already has!

[blindpig]

3. shameless kick

Youse people needs to pay attention. This is what's going down, are you OK with this?

[JVS]

4. You should practice on brevity, but it is some interesting stuff