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Nielsen Co. Executives Launch PR Campaign
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Published: May 21, 2008
TAMPA - Nielsen Co. executives are starting a public lobbying campaign to argue that the ratings giant is fulfilling job creation goals, despite recent layoffs, while also offering an apology for mishandling recent cuts.
The public relations effort comes amid a high-stakes project at Nielsen to balance investments in its Oldsmar technical and research center while cutting costs through layoffs and by hiring outside contractors for some positions.
Some local politicians have criticized Nielsen for cutting or outsourcing more than 300 local jobs, while other government officials say they're happy with the company's performance.
Amid that environment, Nielsen executives have made rounds of visits to local officials, and today began taking out full-page advertisements in The Tampa Tribune and the St. Petersburg Times to burnish the company's image.
"We are enormously proud of this state-of-the-art facility - Nielsen's largest in the world - and of the 1,700 talented people who work there each day," wrote David L. Calhoun, CEO of Nielsen in an open letter to be published today.
Nielsen is trying to navigate upheaval in its core business of measuring TV ratings, an industry where Nielsen has more competitors than any time in its past. Cable companies, for instance, now can offer direct ratings data from television set-top boxes, and the advent of digital video recorders is putting pressure on Nielsen to better track whether people skip commercials.
At the same time, Nielsen clients such as NBC or Procter & Gamble increasingly want the company to measure audiences who watch media online, on cell phones, in video games and elsewhere - leading Nielsen to invest heavily in new technology to track that viewing.
Amid the changes, Calhoun wrote that the company made firings in ways that managers now regret.
Nielsen last year cut about 50 jobs in Oldsmar as part of a global cost-cutting program and cut jobs in a Dunedin call center, including 19 full-time workers, 15 part-time workers and 41 temporary workers. Then this year Nielsen cut 67 jobs from its internal technical support division in Oldsmar, and outsourced 50 workers to TATA Consultancy Services, an Indian-owned global services company.
"We appreciate that for any associate of Nielsen whose job is eliminated, this has a very serious impact," Calhoun wrote. The recent cuts in Oldsmar were done in ways that "were not up to our standards - and for that we are deeply sorry. We can - and will - do better." Amid those cuts, workers with decades of experience were walked out of the building with little or no notice.
Despite the cuts, Nielsen still exceeds job creation goals to receive government incentives in Oldsmar, said Oldsmar city manager Bruce Haddock. For example, Nielsen began with a baseline of about 1,200 jobs in Oldsmar, and receives between $500 and $1,000 annually per job added above 1,400. It employs 1,700 in Oldsmar after recent layoffs. Those incentives have added up to $554,568 from Oldsmar since 2003.
If Nielsen does not meet job creation goals, the incentives end.
"They've met all the requirements of the grant agreements, and they're a substantial economic contributor to Oldsmar," Haddock said. Nielsen is Oldsmar's largest taxpayer, he said, and "I'm very happy they made the decision to relocate to Oldsmar."
Nielsen has applied for $144,000 in job-creation incentives in 2007 for 342 jobs, Haddock said, above the required baseline, and will likely receive those funds.
Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at rmullins@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7919.
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Reader Comments
Posted by ( Nielsenemployee ) on June 27, 2008 at 1:10 p.m. ( Suggest removal )
This company lies. Arthur Nielsen is rolling over in his grave at what these carpetbaggers have done to his company. The only reason they are apologizing is because they got caught with their pants down. Lou Dobbs, rightly, called them out. I hope companies like P&G and Kraft and Georgia Pacific cancel their contracts with Nielsen because all of their data is going to be wrong because the Indian employees that are taking over the data centers aren't smart enough to think outside of the scripts they are given. We have to train them in order to get our severence packages but the take twice as long to catch on than any American employee I've trained. They only do what they're told. Nothing more, nothing less. Most of them have nothing more than a high school diploma.
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