Burson

Background

When Burson Cohn & Wolfe and Hill + Knowlton merged in 2024 to form Burson, they created the largest public relations agency in the world.¹ Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW) itself was the result of a 2018 merger between Burson-Marsteller and Cohn & Wolfe. ² Owned by British PR and advertising holding company WPP, Burson and its subsidiaries have worked for ExxonMobil, Shell, Aramco, the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

Before merging with Cohn & Wolfe and Hill + Knowlton, Burson-Marsteller became well known for crisis communications, including advising Union Carbide after the Bhopal disaster killed thousands of people.³ Burson-Marsteller has aggressively deployed third party “grassroots” organizations to defend industry, including the “smokers’ rights” group National Smokers Alliance in the 1990s. Although the National Smokers Alliance presented itself as the voice of smokers fighting anti-smoking legislation, almost all of its funding came from the tobacco industry, especially long-time Burson-Marsteller client Philip Morris.⁴ Burson-Marsteller defended its decades long relationship with Philip Morris, now known as Altria, after Rachel Maddow referenced Burson-Marsteller’s clients on her show and commented, “When evil needs public relations, evil has Burson-Marsteller on speed dial.”⁵

Hill + Knowlton created the infamous playbook for the tobacco industry to convince people that smoking was not dangerous.⁶ After studies linked cigarettes to cancer in 1953, Hill + Knowlton proposed that the tobacco industry take control of the scientific narrative by funding scientists and studies questioning the link between tobacco and cancer.⁷

Oil and Gas Climate Initiative

From at least 2016 to 2022, Hill + Knowlton Strategies managed communications for the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative, a coalition of oil and gas companies created to project a climate-friendly image of the fossil fuel industry. The Oil & Gas Climate Initiative designated Hill + Knowlton as its secretariat on a United Nations website until 2022,⁹ indicating the PR firm had a high level of involvement.¹⁰ In November 2022, Clean Creatives co-founder Jamie Henn told DeSmog that the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative was run out of Hill + Knowlton Strategies’ London office.

Shell Eco-Marathon

Burson Marsteller ad for Shell's Eco-Marathon — BCW brought Shell’s Eco-Marathon to China. Source: Digital Media Awards China¹¹

Source: Stevie Awards

From at least 2012 until the Burson Cohn & Wolfe merger in 2018, Burson Marsteller managed Shell’s Eco-Marathon, a corporate promotion event in which students design and race energy efficient vehicles.¹² After the 2018 merger, Burson Cohn & Wolfe represented Shell’s Eco-Marathon. In 2021, Burson Cohn & Wolfe was tasked with bringing Shell’s Eco-Marathon to China, in an effort to target both students and Chinese citizens concerned with their environmental impact.¹³ According to Burson Cohn & Wolfe’s submission to the Stevie Awards on behalf of this campaign, one of Shell’s main goals was to “ensure more EECs [Energy Engaged Citizens] be aware [sic] of what shell is doing towards a cleaner energy future.” From July to November in 2021, BCW placed print, TV, and social media ads in the Chinese media market to increase awareness of Shell’s Eco-Marathon.¹⁴

In its award submission, BCW notes that bringing the Shell Eco-Marathon to China helped Shell deliver a message about how environmentally friendly the corporation is, especially since China had recently announced its goal of carbon neutrality by 2060. BCW launched a social media campaign under the hashtag #HowFarCanWeGowith1UnitofEnergy to generate buzz for Shell’s Eco-Marathon, and repeatedly emphasized Shell’s darcabonization practices. BCW created a program on Chinese social media platform WeChat and a behind-the-scenes documentary showing students participating in Shell’s Eco-Marathon.¹⁵

In a survey before the PR campaign, BCW found that Chinese respondents most often associated the words energy, global, market, petroleum, and technology with Shell. During and after the campaign, respondents associated Shell with China, vehicle, energy, eco-friendly, and future. BCW reported that more than 58 million people viewed its Shell Eco-Marathon content.¹⁶ In 2022, BCW won an Asia-Pacific Stevie Award,¹⁷ a Gold Standard Award from the Public Relations & Communications Association¹⁸ and an award from the International Public Relations Society for this campaign.¹⁹

Stance on Climate Change

Burson Cohn & Wolfe’s parent company, WPP, describes its climate change commitments on its website as follows: “We support urgent action to tackle the climate crisis through the Paris Climate Agreement and have been working to cut our carbon footprint since 2006.”²⁰

As of February 2024, Hill + Knowlton Strategies’ energy and industrials team said that “We operate at the heart of the energy transition, consulting clients to ensure they have a licence to operate,” according to its website.²¹

“When the world’s leading climate scientists (IPCC) specifically called out the PR industry for obstructing climate action earlier this year, Exhibit A could have been H+K [Hill+Knowlton] — a firm that does the dirty work for none other than ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and the like,” Geoffrey Supran, PhD, an associate professor at the University of Miami who researches fossil fuel disinformation and propaganda tactics, told DeSmog by email in November 2022, when Hill + Knowlton was named as COP27’s PR firm.

Funding

PRovoke Media estimated that Burson’s revenue would reach $1 billion in 2024 based on the combined estimated revenues between Burson Cohn & Wolfe and Hill + Knowlton reported in PRovoke Media’s 2023 Global 250 Agency Ranking.²²

Clients

Key People

Simon Whitehead – UK CEO of Burson

Before BCW merged with Hill & Knowlton to become Burson, Simon Whitehead grew the UK Energy & Industrials team at Hill + Knowlton with clients including Shell, the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative, and E.ON.²³

Actions

December 14, 2023

PEMEX Deer Park Refinery. Source: PEMEX Facebook Account²⁴

Hill + Knowlton Strategies filed a report under the U.S. Department of Justice Foreign Agent Registration Act in which it described its work for Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX).²⁵ In the report, Hill + Knowlton said it created a crisis plan for Deer Park Refining, an oil refinery owned by PEMEX.

November 4, 2022

Over 400 scientists signed a letter calling for Hill + Knowlton to drop its fossil fuel clients in light of news that COP27’s host country, Egypt, had hired the PR firm to help organize COP27 and lead communications for the event.²⁶ The letter was published by the Union for Concerned Scientists and Clean Creatives, an initiative pushing for advertising and PR firms to stop working for fossil fuel companies.²⁷ The letter described Hill + Knowlton’s work for the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, Saudi Aramco, and ExxonMobil as “incompatible” with its role leading public communications for the United Nations climate talks.

Hill + Knowlton did not return a request for comment to DeSmog or other publications regarding the letter.²⁸

October 21, 2022

Open Democracy reported that Egypt hired Hill + Knowlton Strategies to handle communications for its presidency of COP27, the United Nations climate talks being held in Sharm El Sheik, Egypt in November 2022.²⁹ Mada Masr, an English and Arabic news organization based in Egypt, reported that Timothy Hurst, then Hill + Knowlton’s managing director for the Middle East, Turkey, India, and Africa, was photographed at one of the conference’s preparation meetings.³⁰

September 28, 2022

In a document filed under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, Hill + Knowlton said Petróleos Mexicanos hired it to “develop an all-inclusive crisis communication and training plan for Deer Park as reflected in the [Statement of Work].”³¹ Deer Park was an oil refinery owned by Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX); a crisis communications plan is a blueprint for how a company should respond in the midst of a public relations crisis.³²

May 2022

BCW Global, Burson Cohn & Wolfe’s international division, represented General Electric as it announced its “decarbonization roadmap” with Saudi Aramco. These announcements were part of Saudi Arabia’s “Saudi Vision 2030” and its net zero by 2060 strategy.³³

BCW Global also represented General Electric through its announcement that it was partnering with Shell to decarbonize its liquified natural gas operations in Saudi Arabia by using hydrogen, not natural gas, as fuel.³⁴ Shell drew criticism in 2021 for its lobbying in the UK to transition the natural gas infrastructure to a hydrogen-based fuel system, which critics noted would not lead to a net zero system in the UK.³⁵

2020

From April to July 2020, Saudi Arabia paid Burson Cohn & Wolfe $1.1 million to design an international media strategy for NEOM, a $500 billion futuristic city project launched by the Kingdom’s government.³⁶ NEOM is a project of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund, which has sought to diversify the Saudi Arabian economy. Burson Cohn & Wolfe was hired to sell NEOM in the United States market as the futuristic city project faced questions over feasibility and waning investor interest.³⁷

In 2017, Cohn & Wolfe began representing NEOM.³⁸ Before merging with Cohn & Wolfe in 2018, Burson Marstellar had its own ties to the Saudi Arabian government. In 2017, Burson Marstellar won a public relations contract for the Islamic Military Alliance, a Saudi Arabian initiative referred to as the “Islamic NATO.”³⁹

June 2018

The newly formed 501(c)(4) organization Americans for Carbon Dividends hired Hill + Knowlton to work as its communications team.⁴⁰ Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) and former Senator John Breaux (D-LA) launched Americans for Carbon Dividends to generate support for a federal carbon tax and dividend policy, especially among Republicans. Exelon, First Solar, and the American Wind Energy Association funded the group. Americans for Carbon Dividends paid Hill + Knowlton $130,000 in 2018,⁴¹ and replaced them with a different PR firm in 2019.⁴²

2014

Advanced Energy for Life ad created by Burson Marsteller — Source: Peabody⁴³

In 2014, Peabody Energy Corp., the largest private coal company in the world, hired Burson-Marsteller to oppose the EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan.⁴⁴ Proof Communications, a subsidiary of Burson-Marsteller, created the Advanced Energy for Life campaign promoting the idea of “clean coal” and that continued coal use was essential to ending the “crisis of global energy poverty.”⁴⁵ Its website tagline was “Solving energy poverty, fueling global economies and improving the environment through clean coal.” They created the Advanced Energy for Life “Clean Coal” awards, which were given to coal plants that were supposedly engaging in carbon capture technology.⁴⁶

The Advanced Energy for Life website, originally registered to Proof managing director Luis Hernandez,⁴⁷ posted video advertisements featuring Southern Company advocating for clean coal and included an opinion piece from economist Roger Bezdek arguing that carbon dioxide is “Profoundly Earth-Friendly.”⁴⁸ The website also included a call to action where people could send comments to the EPA requesting that proposed coal plant regulations be scrapped.⁴⁹ This webpage said that the solution was more coal power plants, not fewer: “Every large, new supercritical plant delivers the equivalent carbon benefit of removing one million cars from the road,” read the page, referring to the most recent coal plant technology.

The campaign recruited spokespeople who were billed as environmental leaders, including former EPA administrator Jeff Holmstead. Proof Communications described him as “one of the nation’s climate change leaders,”⁵⁰ but Holmstead was a coal lobbyist and had overseen the rollback of industry regulations during his tenure in the George W. Bush administration.

The advertisements were featured in the United States, the UK, and across Europe. The UK Advertising Standards Authority found the Advanced Energy for Life advertisements “misleading” and ordered Peabody to stop publishing them after the World Wildlife Fund filed a complaint against the ads for obscuring the environmental damage caused by coal.⁵¹

2009

Eureka America's Natural Gas Alliance ad — National Journal October 3, 2009 Source: Media Radar

America's Natural Gas Alliance ad, run by Hill + Knowlton in National Journal — National Journal, July 4, 2009 – Source: Media Radar

Hill + Knowlton launched and built⁵² America’s Natural Gas Alliance,⁵³ a gas industry group formed to block the 2009 cap-and-trade climate bill from becoming law.⁵⁴ Anadarko Petroleum, Chesapeake Energy, XTO Energy, Devon Energy, and other large gas companies pledged approximately $80 million to fund America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA). ANGA ran full-page advertisements in The Washington Post, National Journal, The Hill, and POLITICO, and half-page ads in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal claiming that increased use of natural gas could halve U.S. emissions.⁵⁵ In September 2009, Adweek reported that other WPP agencies were also working on ANGA’s advertising and lobbying efforts.⁵⁶ Grey was named as the lead advertising agency, with Hill + Knowlton conducting public relations for ANGA. Hill + Knowlton subsidiary Wexler + Walker lobbied for ANGA;⁵⁷ in 2009 ANGA paid the lobbying shop $1.22 million.⁵⁸

America's Natural Gas Alliance ad in the Wall Street Journal — Source: Media Radar. Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2009

2006

In 2008, Burson-Marsteller won the Jack Felton Golden Ruler Award along with the Shell communications team and A Brink & Company for its 2006 campaign to improve Shell’s brand image.⁵⁹ The award submission detailed how Burson-Marsteller was brought in to improve Shell Oil’s “reputational crisis” as high oil prices led to outpourings of public anger at oil companies and the U.S. Senate summoned Shell’s U.S. President to appear before the chamber.⁶⁰ The campaign had a specific goal: stave off proposed legislation for an oil profits windfall tax.⁶¹

Burson-Marsteller helped Shell Oil do just that with “A National Dialogue on Energy Security,” a PR campaign which featured the US President of Shell Oil going to all 50 states to meet with business and community leaders to “to counter the ‘big oil’ image with a human, face-to-face campaign.” Burson-Marsteller invited influential people to these town hall meetings, where participants were asked how they thought the United States should increase its oil supply. These survey responses were compiled into a booklet which was shared with policymakers and the US Chamber of Commerce in February 2008.⁶²

The campaign found that at the beginning of the tour, Shell had a favorability rating of 48 percent with the American people “among those aware of the tour”; following the tour that increased to 61 percent. The award submission noted that NGOs in particular were more likely to label Shell as “environmentally sound” following the tour. Shell’s messaging also found its way into political discourse. The award submission ends with “most important, the key messages, including access to domestic supplies, diversity of fuel sources, and the need to moderate demand, have been increasingly picked up in key discussions among elected officials and other influencers.”⁶³

2002

As the government of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien prepared to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, Burson-Marsteller’s Canadian subsidiary National Public Relations was hired by Canadian industrial groups⁶⁴ to fight against the ratification.⁶⁵ National Public Relations created the Canadian Coalition for Responsible Environmental Solutions (CCRES) to lobby Canadian leaders and turn public opinion against ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.⁶⁶ When CCRES was launched, public opinion polls showed a majority of Canadians supported the Kyoto Protocol.⁶⁷ According to a filing with the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, and the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters directly controlled CCRES.⁶⁸ Using the tagline “Made in Canada,” CCRES advocated for voluntary greenhouse gas emissions reductions as an alternative to ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. For several weeks CCRES ran a TV and radio ad campaign which advertising executives estimated cost $225,000 a week and which was funded almost entirely by the coalition’s oil industry members.⁶⁹ Earned media placements were part of the campaign as well. Coalition leaders such as Nancy Hughes Anthony, the president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and Tom D’Aquino of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives were interviewed by the Canadian public broadcasting service saying that implementing Kyoto would destroy the economy and lead to 200,000 job cuts.⁷⁰

Guy Giorno, a National PR staffer, organized a dinner between members of CCRES and the Conservative Party.⁷¹ Giorno followed up with each member of parliament with an email suggesting how they should describe the Kyoto Protocol in op-eds or in letters to their constituents, according to James J. Bradley, a member of the Ontario Legislative Assembly who received the email.⁷²

1998

In 1998, as California and Washington state prepared to enact tough emission standards on cars, Burson-Marsteller was hired by auto manufacturers and the California Chamber of Commerce to fight a proposal that the same emissions standards apply to light trucks.⁷³ As part of this campaign, Burson-Marsteller created Californians for Realistic Vehicle Standards, a group run out of the offices of the California Chamber of Commerce. Californians for Realistic Vehicle Standards’ phone number was the same as Burson-Marsteller’s office in Sacramento.⁷⁴ A National Resources Defense Council analysis of the discrepancy between automakers’ estimated costs of compliance with California Air Resources Board’s emissions standards and the actual costs found that Californians for Realistic Vehicle Standards estimated that to comply with California’s LEV II program would cost $7,000 per vehicle and result in 33 percent fewer full-sized vehicles available to consumers. In comparison, the California Air Resources Board estimated the cost of compliance per vehicle to be $206.⁷⁵

1995

In 1995, the American Petroleum Institute and other trade associations tied to the fossil fuel industry hired Burson-Marsteller to fight stricter air quality regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.⁷⁶ As part of this campaign, Burson-Marsteller created the Foundation for Clean Air Progress (FCAP), a group which positioned itself as “a non-profit, nonpartisan organization that was formed in 1995 to provide public education and information about air quality progress.”⁷⁷ However, its operations were run entirely from Burson-Marsteller’s offices.⁷⁸ The American Farm Bureau Foundation, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Petroleum Marketers Association of America, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce were all members of FCAP, and their represented industries stood to bear the brunt of the $6 billion price tag for following the EPA’s ozone regulations.⁷⁹

Burson-Marsteller created TV and radio ads attributed to FCAP in the battle over EPA’s air pollution regulations. Burson-Marsteller also heavily publicized studies commissioned by FCAP showing that air quality was improving; articles discussing these studies showed up in local papers across the country in the late 1990s.⁸⁰ In one op-ed published in the Connecticut Insider in 2001, FCAP’s president Bill Fay wrote:

“Further evidence of the public’s misperception of our actual environmental status is a 1999 Roper poll that showed 56 percent of Americans fear that the next decade may be the last chance to ‘save the Earth from an environmental catastrophe.’ Clearly, the alarmists have dominated the public dialogue. What is absent from the debate is a balanced picture of both accomplishments and needed improvements still to be implemented.”
⁸¹

FCAP’s website even included a section where teachers could find lesson plans on air pollution, which announced that “The Foundation for Clean Air Progress provides teachers with the tools and resources they need to present air pollution lesson plans to all age groups – from kindergarten to high school.”⁸² FCAP often asserted that air quality had been improving over the previous 20 years, so additional regulations were not only unnecessary but costly to businesses.⁸³ FCAP was active through 2008.

April 1994

Along with the PR firm APCO Worldwide, Burson Marstellar was hired to help organize The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, a Philip Morris front group established to question the link between smoking and cancer.⁸⁴

December 1994

In December 1994, Burson-Marsteller executive Thomas J. Mosser was killed when a package delivered to his home exploded.⁸⁵ Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, confessed to the murder in 1995. Kaczynski said he murdered Mosser because he worked for Burson-Marsteller, and incorrectly asserted that the PR firm had cleaned up Exxon’s image after the Valdez oil spill in 1989.⁸⁶ Burson-Marsteller responded to Kaczynski’s claims, saying that it had worked with Exxon in the past but did not advise the oil company in the wake of the Valdez oil spill.⁸⁷

1993

In 1993, a division of Burson-Marsteller called the Advocacy Communications Team organized a public relations campaign to defeat a proposed BTU tax, which would have reduced greenhouse gas emissions.⁸⁸ A few weeks after proposing a tax on fuel based on how many British Thermal Units (BTU) of energy were sold, President Bill Clinton announced a program to reduce the United States’ emissions to 1990 levels by 2000.⁸⁹ With funding from the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Petroleum Institute, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Burson-Marsteller created the American Energy Alliance to oppose the BTU tax. Like other astroturf organizations, it signed up other members to give the appearance of a broader coalition, rather than just representing industry interests.

In order to persuade Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee to oppose the BTU tax, Burson-Marsteller sent more than 45 staff members to 23 states to drum up opposition to the proposed tax.⁹⁰ These Burson-Marsteller staffers sent anti-BTU editorials to local newspapers, helped school boards calculate their tax burden if the BTU tax became law, and organized press conferences to publicize the results of studies commissioned by Burson-Marsteller showing that the tax would lead to job losses. Burson-Marsteller also ran advertisements featuring local businesses opposing the tax.

“Ten years ago, you could have used 10 to 15 lobbyists to kill this thing on Capitol Hill,” Jim McAvoy, senior vice-president of Burson-Marsteller’s Advocacy Communications Team, told Time Magazine in 1993. “Now you have to hire 45 people and send them to 23 states. That’s because all the noise is supposed to have more credibility. Lawmakers have to hear it echoed from the folks back home.”⁹¹

Burson-Marsteller’s strategy to target vulnerable Senate Democrats worked; the BTU tax passed the House of Representatives but died in the Senate.⁹²