Healthcare Reform and B-M ... Good Business?

Now that the Health Care Reform Bill has passed and the bill has been signed by President Obama one can assume there will be a flurry of business for everything “healthcare”, from medical plans, to pharmaceuticals, to doctors and their specialties. Everyone will need a lobbyist or Public Relations agency to help them with the image reconstruction that this new era of healthcare entails. There are endless possibilities on how to attract the interest of the public and try to interpret and explain the bill for the benefit of clients in the healthcare industry.

I can think of several areas: pharmaceuticals, physicians, hospital corporations, where image and crisis management will be needed as this new health care bill is introduced to the American public. As Mark Penn, CEO of B-M, wrote in an article for the Huffington Post, “The Health Care Jam”, (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-penn/strategy-corner-the-heath_b_488064.html) the American public’s support and acceptance of this bill is less than desirable. The article expresses that during the time of other momentous legislations, like the Civil Rights, the public’s acceptance was at 60% even when the legislation was considered contentious. With the Health Care Reform Bill the public either does not understand the implications of the bill or does not comprehend it enough to feel comfortable about its passing. It will be up to savvy Public Relations agencies, which have extensive experience in Health Care practice, to serve the different interest groups, which are impacted by this legislation. Business could boom for PR agencies who have established themselves as experts on this field. Strategic planning and concerted media campaigns will be needed that are public-friendly and can assuage the fears of the impending changes to the American healthcare system.

It did not go unnoticed that Burson-Marsteller is already getting ready for the changes that are to come. This week it announced the hiring of Helene Ellison as Chair of Global Healthcare Practice (http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100316006554&newsLang=en). Penn said during the announcement, “Helene has proven herself to be one of the leading communications counselors in the healthcare industry” Ellison, a former BMer, was onboard during the Tylenol Crisis in the early 1980’s and was VP of Healthcare when B-M represented more than twenty pharmaceutical therapies.

Is B-M ready for Health Care Reform? I think it is!

The News and B-M: What I Learned

Throughout the month of February I collected news about Burson-Marsteller to create a comprehensive Chatter Report about how the news depicted B-M. I spent a good time of my Spring Break going through all my Google Alerts, B-M Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts, and YouTube videos. What I found was an astonishing amount of positive news where B-M’s employees, executives, and areas of expertise within the agency were highlighted for their work. There were news about awards; there were news about hiring of excellent PR professionals (Bob Pickard as CEO of Asia-Pacific) (http://www.prweekus.com/interview-bob-pickard-burson-marstellers-new-asia-pacific-ceo/article/163475/); there were news about studies and research done by B-M which were heralded as expert advice on a certain field (Social Media Check-Up of Fortune 100 Companies)(http://www.digitalperspectiveblog.com); and finally there were news about clients and how B-M was helping them with the positive propagation of their image (SPAM products and Hormel).

B-M is in the forefront of relaying from within positive news about their agency. The Twitter account @BMGlobalNews had forty-seven news leads for the month of February. B-Mers are encouraged to make use of Social Media – be it through Twitter, Facebook, or Blogs – to disseminate a positive image of what the agency is producing – not only for their clients, but for the public in general. One example was the previously mentioned Social Media Survey created by Proof Digital Media. This survey in another time – long, long time ago, in a far away galaxy and before the internet – would have been shared only within the company and with certain clients as a research tool. In the past, maybe it would have been printed 100 times as an example of the arduous work done by executives at B-M, but in the present time it has reached an enormous amount of people (including me) who would have never had the capacity to know about it.

As many people has said – Social Media serves Public Relations – and the news I read about B-M for the month of February definitely prove that B-M is using Social Media to disseminate its Public Relations strategic plan – be it for the agency or for its clients.

The Earthquake in Chile and Social Media: How B-M Made Sure Their Employees Were Safe

Last Friday, February 26^th, we woke up to the horrible news that another earthquake had hit, this time in Chile with a magnitude of 8.8 in the Richter scale. The news media was flooded with news of the destruction in Chile and of the possible tsunamis threatening Hawaii, California and Mexico. In this time and age where more and more people are turning to Social Media for their news, Twitter, Google and Mashable became the unsung heroes by creating a network of information where people could find each other during the crisis.

I follow most of the Twitter accounts set-up for Burson-Marsteller and was able to track throughout the next few days how B-M’s employees in the United States looked for information about their comrades in Latin America trying desperately to find any news about their peers through the social media channels. Not only did one see the honest worry in their tweets but one could sense that even if these BMers from New York, Boston and San Francisco had not personally met their peers in Chile the fact they communicated through social media channels and the fact they all worked for B-M was enough to create an empathy among them.

On March 1^st, @BMGlobalNews tweeted “Burson-Marsteller is glad to say our colleagues in B-M Chile have been accounted for and are safe. Our thoughts go out to the people Chile.”

On March 2^nd, Santiago Hinojosa, President and Chief Executive of B-M Latin America (Twitter @BmLatAm) had written a blog (http://br.bmlatamblog.com/) expressing his sadness regarding the earthquake and letting the readers know how they could help in the relief efforts. He continued to state that he was in contact with Emilio Sanfuentes, Director of B-M Chile and making sure the Chilean B-M employees and their families were safe.

It made me think of how well B-M has strategized through their employees a communication system that can help them in the case of a crisis – in this case a natural disaster.