NEW YORK - July 31, 2006 - Burson-Marsteller today announced an agreement with The NewsMarket (www.thenewsmarket.com), the leading online platform for news video, to create a customized, proprietary digital capability for Burson. This partnership enables Burson to offer its clients a highly scalable, fully integrated solution to market and deliver digital content to journalists, new and emerging news platforms, and direct-to-consumers globally in local languages.

This marks the first time a PR agency will offer a comprehensive, integrated strategic counsel capability with a digital content management and distribution platform that will enable turn-key execution for clients.

“The rapid pace and fragmentation of a 24/7 global news environment coupled with the migration from print to an online world has made it imperative for companies to incorporate multimedia and other interactive strategies to engage and grow their audience base,” said Mark J. Penn, Burson-Marsteller’s Worldwide President & CEO. “Our partnership with The NewsMarket gives us the ability to create custom, digital solutions for our clients to deliver fully integrated digital media relations and direct-to-consumer message campaigns.”

As the number-one destination for journalists searching for video content used by more than 9000 online and broadcast media outlets in 144 countries, The NewsMarket agreement provides Burson-Marsteller employees and clients unprecedented access to the largest community of registered and profiled journalists in the world seeking multimedia content.

“The media landscape has changed forever and this new environment demands a new approach. We’re thrilled to be working with one of the world’s leading communications consultancies to take their clients aggressively into this new and exciting on-demand, digital world.” said Shoba Purushothaman, The NewsMarket CEO and co-founder.

About The NewsMarket
The NewsMarket is the leading online platform for news video. Journalists from 9,000 media outlets in 144 countries rely on www.thenewsmarket.com to search, preview and download broadcast-standard video for their news stories. The NewsMarket is used by journalists at outlets such as the AP, BBC, BusinessWeek.com, CNN, Forbes.com, Fox News, N24, Nippon TV, NYTimes.com, RAI, TVE, ZDF, and Zee News. Organizations like adidas, AOL, the American Red Cross, Google, GM, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, Motorola, the UK Ministry of Defence, the US Department of State, UNICEF, Volvo, Vonage and Yahoo! use The NewsMarket to host and deliver video content to support their global communications strategies. Headquartered in New York, The NewsMarket has operations in London, San Francisco, Munich, Singapore, Hong Kong and Mumbai. For more information, visit www.thenewsmarket.com.

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About Burson-Marsteller
Burson-Marsteller, established in 1953, is a leading global public relations and public affairs firm. It provides clients with strategic thinking and program execution across a full range of public relations, public affairs, advertising, and web-related services. The firm’s seamless worldwide network consists of 54 wholly-owned offices and 46 affiliate offices, together operating in 58 countries across six continents. Burson-Marsteller is a part of Young & Rubicam Brands, a subsidiary of WPP Group plc (NASDQ: WPPGY), one of the world’s leading communications services networks.

First established in Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo in 1973, the Burson-Marsteller network in Asia Pacific includes offices in Bangalore, Beijing, Chennai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Melbourne, Mumbai, New Delhi, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney and Tokyo; with affiliates in Auckland, Bangkok, Islamabad, Karachi, Manila, Taipei, and Wellington.

For the third time in five years, Burson-Marsteller’s Asia-Pacific team was named “Network of the Year” at the 2005 annual Asia Pacific PR Awards, the industry’s top award recognizing outstanding public relations work across the region. Burson-Marsteller Australia’s work for Novartis’ Elidel was named Campaign of the Year at the same awards. The company was also top-ranked in Media Magazine’s 2005 Asia Pacific Consultancy Report Card.