[10] She announced her retirement in January 2023 and was replaced in August 2023 by Corey duBrowa, who previously served as head of communications and public affairs at Alphabet and is now Global CEO of Burson.

[18][19] Notable employees include Karen Hughes, former senior aide to U.S. President George W. Bush,[20] Ari Fleischer, former White House Press Secretary,[21] Tom Reed, a former six-term Congressman from Corning, New York,[22]Thomas Nides, Former US Ambassador to Israel; Lord Watson of Richmond, a member of the House of Lords; Perry Yeatman, senior vice president of corporate affairs at Kraft Foods; Kathryn Beiser, vice president of corporate communications at Discover Financial Services; Bob Feldman and Jeff Hunt, co-founders and principals of PulsePoint Group communications consultancy;[23] Daniel Lamarre, CEO of Cirque du Soleil,[24] and prominent figures in a number of PR companies, including the CEOs of Ketchum Inc.,[23] Cohn & Wolfe and Wunderman.

[3][4] It uses a framework and consulting methodology to assess and actively manage what it refers to as “reputation capital” across four areas: company actions, communications, social narratives, and stakeholder beliefs.

As part of a restructuring strategy, in 2018 parent company WPP PLC merged Burson-Marsteller, the sixth-largest PR firm worldwide, and Cohn & Wolfe, which ranked 12th.

[32] Prior to the establishment of Burson-Marsteller, co-founders Harold Burson and William "Bill" Marsteller owned separate agencies focused on public relations and advertising, respectively.

[52] One year later, Burson-Marsteller executive Geoff Nightingale came up with the idea of Hands Across America as a fundraising event for USA for Africa sponsored by its client Coca-Cola.

[45] In 1991, the firm acquired Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly (BMSK), which was perhaps most well known for their work with prominent Republicans and businesses as well as foreign governments, including controversial autocrats and despots.

[62] International work carried out by Burson-Marsteller in the early 1990s included a public relations campaign undertaken for the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism in 1993, following terrorist attacks on tourists in Egypt.

[65] In 1993 Burson-Marsteller helped organize a response to a 1992 United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report which had identified secondhand smoke as a Group A human carcinogen.

[66] The strategy employed by Burson-Marsteller was to encourage doubt among consumers about the scientific validity of the EPA report and to target legislators who supported curbs on smoking.

[71] Their activities also included support for The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), which was created in 1993 by APCO Worldwide, another major public relations firm, with funding from Philip Morris.

[75] Those involved went to great lengths not to reveal the tobacco industry support of these organizations, to give the appearance they represented grassroots opposition to anti-smoking laws rather than the business interests of their sponsors.

[96][97][98] In April 2011, industry expert Paul Holmes named Burson-Marsteller the U.S. Large Agency of the Year, citing its double-digit growth within the United States and record 2010 profits as factors in the award, crediting Penn with improved performance and Burson's "global recovery".

Burson-Marsteller was brought in by AIG to help respond to requests for information from customers, employees and the media, due to the liquidity crisis it suffered in September 2008.

[60] In 2005, the company launched Burson-Marsteller University, providing comprehensive training to its executives in developing corporate communications that are consistent worldwide while remaining culturally appropriate.

[110] In 2009, when the firm debuted a new approach to public relations called "Evidence-Based Communications", Burson-Marsteller also introduced an extensive training program designed to help employees apply it to ongoing projects and new proposals.

[46] In an interview in 2003, Harold Burson was quoted as saying that Burson-Marsteller has been "A training ground for the industry,"[31] with more than 35,000 people continuing to participate in the company's alumni network as of 2010[update].

[113] The firm provided intelligence reports to clients either hourly or daily that advise of new issues, public reception, and critical or supportive responses[115] and carried out market research into CEO and corporate reputation.

[113] In particular, Burson-Marsteller had a close working relationship with many global producers and marketers of petroleum products, especially assisting on key communications of specific crisis situations such as oil spills and serious accidents.

[121] Burson-Marsteller organized a press conference televised across 35 markets in the United States, addressing the recall and reporting that the product tampering had occurred on the shelves, not during manufacturing.

Under advice from the consultants and corporate lawyers, Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson traveled to Bhopal where he was placed in custody by the Indian government.

That campaign focused on Western Europe and the United States, and featured TV commercials and other media coverage of new archeological discoveries and the role of Egypt in the Middle East.

[63] Blackwater USA, the private military contractor, hired Burson-Marsteller subsidiary BKSH to help founder Erik Prince prepare for a congressional hearing in 2007.

[135] Other corporate clients have included Huawei,[136] Procter and Gamble, British Gas Plc, Philips, Unilever, Du Pont, Coca-Cola, GlaxoSmithKline,[45] Merrill Lynch, General Electric,[34] Monsanto, the Federal Communications Commission, and Colgate-Palmolive.

[137] The company's technology practice expanded rapidly over the 1990s with major clients including Apple, Sun Microsystems and Qualcomm and its headquarters moved to Silicon Valley in the late 1990s.

Burson-Marsteller was brought in by the Romanian government to promote trade and tourism for Romania; one result was a week-long visit to the country by NBC's Today program.

[107][149] In doing so the company produced press kits and direct mailings, arranged for journalists to visit Argentina, and held lunches with business groups and financial seminars.

"[160] Feitlowitz describes an initial 33-page report completed under Emmanuel's supervision as echoing the regime's language, referencing, for example, "well-financed subversion campaigns of international origin."

[161] The tasks of the PR company included setting up press interviews for Ukraine's deputy prosecutor general, Renat Kuzmin, during his visits in Brussels.

[165] It became public knowledge that Burson-Marsteller had been soliciting negative articles about Google's privacy practices after security researcher Christopher Soghoian re-posted a pitch[167] he received from a company representative.