The Grand Master of Public Relations
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It’s not easy getting on Harold Burson’s schedule.
A first attempt found him traveling to Burson-Marsteller’s Asia offices. As his assistant said when rescheduling our second meeting (admittedly delayed on my part), “Unfortunately, Mr. Burson’s calendar fills up pretty quickly.” We picked a third date, but I got a call apologizing that he was stuck in back-to-back client meetings.
This tightly packed agenda might be no big deal for a middle-aged CEO, but it actually belongs to a 91-year-old public-relations veteran who relinquished his official CEO title in 1988. Over the course of that career, he built the Burson-Marsteller network by providing counsel to both squeaky-clean consumer brands and controversial corporations knee-deep in crisis. Now when he’s not traveling the globe on business, he comes to the office every day to consult with clients, interact with people in his far-reaching network and work on his memoir.
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