Dermot McNulty, who rejoined Burson-Marsteller in 1998 after his
job as worldwide chief executive of Shandwick was scrapped, has been
appointed to head B-M’s European operation.
McNulty, who until now had held the position of vice chairman of global
business development, takes over the 550-strong, pounds 56 million
business from Ken Rietz, who returns to the US as chief operating
officer of B-M worldwide.
Rietz in turn succeeds Don Cogman, who moved to B-M’s parent, Young and
Rubicam, in September to head its corporate affairs.
In what appears to be a tempering of B-M’s desire to move away from the
implemention of PR campaigns into planning them, McNulty said the agency
wanted to achieve a balance between the two activities.
He said: ’I think the rest of the industry perceived us to be skating
off in the direction of strategy at the expense of the other stuff. If
you can’t deliver the implementation you are not in a position to give a
client a total solution. Clients want to feel they have one-stop
shopping.’
McNulty said he planned to ’continue what I feel is a revitalisation of
Burson-Marsteller. What Ken and I have done together is upgrade the
talent pool’.
In recent months the agency has recruited Body Shop communications head
Gavin Grant, Fleishman-Hillard’s UK chief Deborah Saw, and Gabriele
Velte, who was a senior consultant at top German agency Kohtes and
Klewes before moving to oversee PR at Lufthansa.
’The buzz around the place is more so than it was,’ said McNulty.
He added: ’We are trying to continue to get the balance right between
being a global company and being a local company. In Europe at the
moment we are pushing the national business.’
During August and September, Burson-Marsteller won pounds 6 million of
new business.
New work in the region has come from Johnson and Johnson and the ATP
Tour - a global account won two weeks ago to promote the Super 9 tennis
tournaments - which in terms of size and scope rank only just below the
four Grand Slam events (of which Wimbledon is the best known in the UK).
