Death Harold Burson founder Burson-Marsteller, at the age of 98 - Harold Burson, who was a freelance writer for a Memphis newspaper paid 14 cents per column of newspaper, covered the Nuremberg trial for the army radio network in Europe, of which the one-man consulting firm had become the largest in 1983 the world's public relations agency, died on January 10, 2020. He was 98 years old.

Death Harold Burson founder Burson-Marsteller

Mr. Burson has been instrumental in transforming the public relations practice from a cottage industry to an international business employing thousands of people. He had resigned from his position as president and chief executive officer of Burson-Marsteller in 1988 but had continued to play an active role for more than a quarter of a century, and went to work almost every day long after his eighties -ten years. In 1999, a survey by PRWeek, a leading specialist public relations publication, described Mr. Burson as "the most influential public relations figure of the 20th century".

This recognition reflected his role as advisor and confidant to CEOs of companies, heads of government and heads of public sector institutions. His quote from PRWeek read: “The contribution of Harold Burson, president of Burson-Marsteller and architect of the world's largest public relations agency today (1999), is immense in many other ways. He started practicing the concept of integrated marketing decades before this term was even coined. He put PR in advertising at Young & Rubicam on an equal footing (this may never have been done again). Its development of training programs has defined the benchmark model that other agencies have only recently adopted. He has personally sponsored and supported programs, professional organizations, universities and charities to improve the profession.

His talent mentorship gave birth to a whole wave of PR agencies, such as startups, from Burson. He has created a unique Burson culture that continues to unite former employees. Last, and not least, his personal advice has informed the thinking of the boards of directors of many Fortune 100 companies and around the world. He was a staunch defender of the role of business in society as a social entity, insisting that the mission of a business was to offer a good product at the right price, to treat its employees fairly in terms of compensation and retirement, to deal fairly with its suppliers, to support the essential activities of the communities in the areas where it operates and to reward its shareholders with a fair return on investment. But he insisted that the main objective of the company was to generate profits so that it could finance its responsibilities as a social entity.

Son of emigrants from Leeds, in the county of Yorkshire (England), he was born on February 15, 1921 in Memphis (Tennessee). He started school in the third year and graduated from high school at the age of 15. He enrolled at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) knowing that his job as a freelance correspondent on campus for the Memphis Commercial Appeal would cover his college fees and expenses. Six months after graduating, he accepted a public relations position with a major architectural and engineering firm when, as he said, "did they double my salary?" 25 to 50 dollars a week? and allowed me to use a car. " Enlisted in the United States Army in 1943, Mr. Burson joined a combat engineering group in Europe. In 1945, he was transferred to the editorial staff of the American Forces Network a month before the end of the war in Europe. Later that same year, he was appointed to cover the Nuremberg trial and he was the only journalist to obtain an interview during the trial with judge assessor Robert H. Jackson, Attorney General of the United States. Although Justice Jackson swore not to grant an interview, Mr. Burson argued that his audience? American soldiers who fought in the war? had the right to hear directly from the United States Attorney General. Only 24 years old when the Nuremberg trial began, Mr. Burson was most likely the last living journalist to have covered this historic trial. After his release from the military in 1946, Mr. Burson opened a public relations agency in New York in the "tiny corner of a client's office", next to the office of a time executive assistant