“Being a Burson Person is something special”: Burson-Marsteller’s influence in the Americanization of the public relations industry in Latin America (1980s – 2010s)

Abstract

This article explores the Americanization of the public relations industry in Latin America, focused on Burson-Marsteller’s (B-M) venture into the region. Coupling archives of personal documents owned by Harold Burson, one of the founders of B-M, with 10 interviews with key managers of the agency in the region between the 1980s and late 2010s, this article explores (1) the conception in the 1980s by B-M managers that public relations was less “sophisticated” in Latin America when compared to U.S. standards, (2) the strategies and tactics that B-M put forward in the region since the 1990s, which differed from the Latin American approach to the profession, and (3) the organizational and business-oriented culture of the agency, which influenced the work of public relations practitioners between the 1990s and 2010s in the region. These findings outline the hybridization between a managerial, American-based approach to public relations, with the relationship-based approach that characterized the region for most of the twentieth century.