Report by Donald A. Baer, worldwide chair and chief executive officer
Donald A. Baer, worldwide chair and chief executive officer
Burson-Marsteller marked 2014 by fully integrating our ‘Burson-Marsteller, Being More’ positioning into everything we do. Our teams around the world approach every opportunity with the determination to be more ideas-driven, results-oriented and evidence-based in delivering strategic communications solutions. We pride ourselves on being among our clients’ most trusted advisors, partners who assess their business goals and communications challenges, understand what needs to be done and determine how to bring our Being More spirit to the job at hand.
This approach led to important achievements in 2014. We brought the most advanced digital, social and analytics tools to bear across all of our markets and raised the level on our creative content development, ensuring our communications have the most meaningful business impact for our clients.
We won global assignments and expanded existing work into new regions with The Rezidor Hotel Group, Pitney Bowes and Sony. High-profile US assignments included helping: Texas Health Resources manage the complexities surrounding the first patient in the US to be diagnosed with Ebola; Target handle a massive data breach crisis; and Comcast NBCUniversal build its reputation among national opinion leaders. In Asia-Pacific, we added the National Basketball Association, Princess Cruises and Rolex to our client roster. Latin America grew with new client engagements with Coca-Cola and the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Mexico, Shell in Peru and McDonald’s in Chile. Europe produced outstanding digital work, notably the seventh annual Twiplomacy study.
The Burson-Marsteller Corporate Perception Indicator launched, in a global partnership with CNBC, underscoring our commitment to being leaders in bringing original thinking to important worldwide conversations. The study, conducted with our sister research firm Penn Schoen Berland, was an unprecedented survey of more than 25,000 people, including 1,800 business executives, across 25 markets on the roles and responsibilities of corporations in society.
Strategic thinking, exceptional creativity, evidence-based discipline and a commitment to excellent results were the building blocks supporting our work around the world in 2014. They form the foundation on which we are building an even stronger Burson-Marsteller in 2015.