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Penn Schoen Berland and Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn has been named the winner of the Consumer Insights category in the 2010 Atticus Awards for his book Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes, PSB announced today.

Open exclusively to professionals working in WPP companies, the annual Atticus Awards honor original published thinking in communications services. Winners receive a cash prize, and many recognized publications are reprinted or excerpted in WPP’s annual Atticus Journal, which will be released in November 2010.

The Awards were judged by Simon Clift, consultant and former chief marketing officer at Unilever; Rik Kirkland, principal and director at McKinsey & Company, and Judie Lannon, editor of Market Leader. Other entrants in this year’s Consumer Insights category included publications from WPP agencies Millward Brown, MVI, and Mindshare.

“I’m deeply honored that Microtrends has been recognized as one of the outstanding examples of WPP’s thought leadership from the last year,’ said Penn. “At Penn Schoen Berland and Burson-Marsteller, much of our work is predicated on the belief that companies must understand and respond appropriately to small shifts in behavior – as harbingers of tomorrow’s big shifts. We are gratified that WPP and the judges of the Atticus Awards have endorsed that perspective.”

The Atticus Awards specifically recognized the paperback edition of Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes, by Mark Penn with E. Kinney Zalesne, published in June 2009 by Twelve.

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Mark Penn ranks #13 on PRWeek’s PR Power List of the 25 most powerful leaders in the communications industry in 2010.

Mark Penn
Worldwide president and CEO, Burson-Marsteller

Love him or hate him, public affairs guru Mark Penn has the ear of some of the most powerful people in the world, having worked with luminaries such as Bill Clinton, his wife Hillary, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

In terms of Washington power brokers, Burson-Marsteller’s Penn stands right at the top of the food chain. His challenge is to remain relevant and influential in a rapidly changing global political climate, and to lead his Burson- Marsteller empire from the front and ensure key staff members come along for the ride.

Download the PR Power List 2009 (pdf format)

Mark Penn interviewed in April 2010 in Madrid, Spain at the Burson-Marsteller EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) Leadership Conference. The CEO discusses Burson-Marsteller’s Evidence-Based Communications Philosophy, PR after the recession and Social Media.

Mark Penn participated in a panel on “The Business of PR” at the 92Y Tribeca in New York with Kathy Bloomgarden, CEO, Ruder Finn and Steven Rubenstein, President, Rubenstein Communications.

In the highlight video, Mark mentions that despite the shrinking demand for newspapers, the demand for news and information in general is skyrocketing, and will continue to rise with the growth of the middle class. Watch the video at 92Y online.

Mark Penn ranks #10 on PRWeek’s PR Power List of the 25 most powerful leaders in the industry in 2009.

Mark Penn [’08 rank - #10]
CEO, Burson-Marsteller

Last year wasn’t easy for Mark Penn. His candidate lost the presidential primary, and his actions were publicly cited for the loss of his firm’s client, Colombia. Yet Penn remains resilient. He is active on client work, including pitching key accounts, and he doesn’t shy away from defending the industry. When MSNBC personality Rachel Maddow took Penn and his firm to task for its client roster, including AIG, Penn defended the importance of its services, even to embattled companies, in an internal memo. And despite Hillary Clinton’s defeat, there’s no doubt that Penn will remain politically influential in the future.

Download the PR Power List 2009 (pdf format)

The Firm Voice: Post-Inaugural PR: What to Expect in Politics and the PR Agency Business in 2009

Many assumed a “wait and see” stance these past few weeks as uncertainty continued to drive the markets and outlook for the PR firm business and beyond. Yet that holding pattern may shake out as businesses get a clearer bead on the future, precipitated in part by yesterday’s inauguration finally signaling a shift from promising to practicing change.

So what exactly does the future hold for the agency business under an Obama administration? What lessons can we—as a profession and as individual practitioners—learn from President Obama’s communications strategies, techniques and tactics? Where will policy and PR intersect in the year ahead—and what does it all mean to you and your day-to-day work?

For the answers, we checked with Mark Penn, whose domain is the nexus between PR and politics. Worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller and president of market research, polling and consulting firm Penn, Schoen and Berland, he has advised both Clintons, Tony Blair and Bill Gates. In 2007, he authored “Microtrends: The Small Forces behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes,” the paperback edition of which will be published in spring. Precipitating its release is Penn’s new “Microtrends” column, which runs regularly in the “Media and Marketing” section of WSJ.com and focuses on demographic trends in society, business and politics.

Here, Penn—who has been called the “Master of the Message” by Time magazine and the “Guru of Small Things” by The New York Times—gives us a sneak peak of his trend-spotting talents to help you navigate the months ahead, and shares his post-inaugural analysis of the new administration, its key communications challenges, and the year ahead for Corporate America and its agency partners.

Mark Penn participates in panel entitled “Media Power Vs. Political Power: The 2008 Election Re-defining the Relationship” alongside senior correspondents from the major news outlets, as part of Time Warner’s Politics 2008 Summit: The Media Conference for the Election of the President. To view the video, please visit the Digital Hollywood Time Warner Summit Conference page.

By MARK PENN
Published August 19, 2008

During the Super Bowl, the seventh game of the World Series and the “American Idol” finale, Americans can be counted on to sit in front of their television sets. The same is true of the quadrennial political conventions. America is a country that tunes in for a good contest.

This year, the party that wins the battle of the conventions will likely win the election. In the past 60 years, few presidential candidates have overcome negative poll numbers taken after the conventions. While races have gotten closer and debates have had an effect, nothing in the months between convention and election has swayed the voters’ preferences.

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At the 2008 Theatre Communications Group Conference in Denver, Microtrends co-author Kinney Zalesne spoke to the importance and emergence of microtrends. View the video on the Theatre Communications Group website

Mark Penn talks about how he got into polling, the high and low points in his career, undiscovered trends, and the power of the internet to bring people together to create change.