PR Firm Braces for Gorbachev PBN Co to orchestrate coverage of leader's visit to Bay Area

By Jamie Beckett
May 31, 1990

What public-relations firm would want to handle thousands of reporters clamoring for a chance to cover Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to the Bay Area? Work day and night for a week straight? And do it all for free?

For PBN Co. of San Francisco, it's a plum assignment.

''An assignment like this is like the end of the rainbow. It's a substantive, important, international event,'' said Peter Necarsulmer, who founded the firm and named it with his initials almost seven years ago. The firm, which had $ 6 million in revenue last year, is hoping the exposure will generate more business, said Necarsulmer.

PBN's usual compensation for similar efforts would run ''well into six figures,'' he said.

The company previously coordinated media coverage of the Golden Gate Bridge 50th anniversary celebration in 1987. That effort took more than a year to plan and earned PBN more than $ 600,000.

Necarsulmer learned of the Gorbachev assignment only a week ago. The firm was selected by San Francisco to orchestrate press coverage of the Soviet leader's visit because it was able to react quickly, according to city officials.

For the past week, Necarsulmer and his 20-person staff have been preparing for what he calls ''this locust storm of press.'' The firm brought in seven extra phone lines and four extra facsimile machines to handle a flood of applications for press credentials.

Yet despite preparations, the fax lines were jammed for two days before yesterday's application deadline. Requests poured in from more than 1,000 media organizations -- ranging from the school newspaper at Kennedy High in Fremont to Agence France-Presse, the French news service - requesting credentials for more than 3,000 journalists.

By tonight, PBN must sift through the bulging folder of faxed applications and - in concert with the U.S. Secret Service, the Soviet Consulate and Stanford University (a stop on Gorbachev's tour) - decide who gets in.

The two press rooms, the Fairmont Hotel's Grand Ballroom and Stanford's Maples Pavilion, can accommodate about 1,500 journalists each. But because of space limitations, most events will be covered by a small pool of reporters while the others watch on closed-circuit TV in the press room.

Besides reviewing credentials, the firm is serving as an unofficial public-relations office for the Gorbachev trip, responding to questions about the Soviet leader's favorite food (PBN still didn't know) and his other tastes.

Once credentials are granted, PBN will help organize pools of reporters who will cover events and share their information with others. The TV networks and their local affiliates, for instance, have organized a group called G-TV, or Gorbachev-TV, with representatives from each news organization, according to Sam Sacco, a partner in PBN.

Who won't make the cut? Well, free-lancers had better be able to prove they belong to ''major and legitimate news organizations,'' Sacco said. ''You won't believe how many photographers will claim they work for Life magazine.''