Burson Called Itself ‘Uniquely Qualified’ for FCC’s DTV Contract

“The FCC must have a communications partner, therefore, with the wherewithal to carry out an aggressive campaign simultaneously in all 49 hot spot markets, plus address the needs of at-risk populations nationwide, including Native Americans, Hispanics, African Americans, seniors, rural residents and people with disabilities,” the proposal said. “Burson-Marsteller is uniquely qualified to support the FCC in meeting these serious and substantial communications challenges.” Weber Merritt, a Washington public-relations firm that also bid on the contract, filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office, alleging that the FCC should have awarded the work to a small-business vendor. It later withdrew the protest.

Burson-Marsteller urged the FCC to let it run “the kind of concentrated, ‘big splash’ necessary to capture attention,” its proposal said. The company suggested messages across TV weather forecasts in all 49 hot spots “timed for precisely the same week, so that audiences cannot get through their day without running into our message ‘roadblock.'” The proposal pictured David Finfrock, the chief meteorologist at NBC’s Dallas-Fort Worth affiliate, as a participant. “By timing the localized roadblocks to coincide, we can create a national news story, thereby adding additional volume and reach to the effort,” the proposal said.

Though the home stretch campaign by its design would be targeted to homes that got their analog TV by antenna, Burson-Marsteller asked the FCC to let it produce video public service announcements for distribution to the homes in high definition. Doing so would “allow for flexibility to adapt to a variety of formats, a stunning appearance and to conform to what is by now common practice,” the proposal said. “From a field production standpoint, it will be nominally more expensive to shoot in 720 or 1080p HD formats,” it conceded. But Burson-Marsteller thinks the return on investment “in terms of greater air time and impact on the audience justifies high-definition production,” it said.

In its FOIA request, Warren asked the FCC to release in full the technical capability/experience statement, performance work statement and quality assurance and surveillance plan that Burson-Marsteller submitted in the commission’s request for quotations. Burson-Marsteller objected to the release of portions on grounds that they contained confidential commercial information and “include proprietary methods, techniques and processes that have been developed by Burson-Marsteller and are a competitive advantage for our firm.” Warren disagreed, arguing that Burson-Marsteller failed to “articulate any competitive harm” that would be caused by the release of the information sought.

In the end, the FCC granted Burson-Marsteller all the blackouts it had asked for, citing arguments that the company never made. For example, through the release of the redacted portions, “a competitor could discover weaknesses in Burson- Marsteller’s work and take advantage of them in future competitions,” the FCC said. “This would put Burson- Marsteller at a competitive disadvantage in a future procurement action, because Burson-Marsteller would not necessarily have access to the same information about the competitor.” The FCC also rejected Warren’s claims that the information Burson-Marsteller wanted shielded from disclosure was of a general nature that it routinely publishes or discloses to the public or that’s readily available online.

Under a section headed “Key Personnel,” the proposal listed four executives -- Don Baer, Mary Crawford, Mark DeVito, Penny Kozakos -- who would supervise the contract, but blacked out their titles and biographical information and even the name and title of a fifth person. Searching the Internet, we found lengthy biographical data on all but DeVito. The information appeared on Burson-Marsteller’s Web site and on a posted copy of a contract that the company landed two years ago to provide PR and marketing services to the General Services Administration through March 2012. For example, a bio of Baer at www.b-m.com lists him as vice chairman and says he joined the firm two years ago from Discovery Communications, where he was senior executive vice president for strategy and development in charge of new ventures and acquisitions. Baer also served as a senior domestic and foreign policy adviser to President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 1997, his bio says.

The GSA contract includes a case history of work that Burson-Marsteller did for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the Federal Reserve Board to publicize the 2003 introduction of new $20 notes. Under a section called “Strategy/Planning,” Burson-Marsteller told the GSA it designed for the agencies “a fully integrated public education program that relied on virtually every communications discipline. B-M took on the role of integrator, campaign manager and strategic counselor, bringing together all of the campaign’s elements: materials development, media outreach, paid media, graphic design, product placement, direct outreach, minority outreach and research.” The FCC documents we obtained bore the same case history as the GSA contract, but with the “Strategy/Planning” section blacked out.