It was revealed on May 12 that Facebook hired the PR firm Burson-Marsteller “to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy. Burson even offered to help an influential blogger write a Google-bashing op-ed, which it promised it could place in outlets like The Washington Post, Politico, and The Huffington Post.”
“The plot backfired when the blogger turned down Burson’s offer and posted the emails that Burson had sent him” BusinessInsider.com wrote. “It got worse when USA Today broke a story accusing Burson of spreading a “whisper campaign” about Google “on behalf of an unnamed client.”
Burson-Marsteller released a statement saying:
“Whatever the rationale, this was not at all standard operating procedure and is against our policies, and the assignment on those terms should have been declined. When talking to the media, we need to adhere to strict standards of transparency about clients, and this incident underscores the absolute importance of that principle.”
These are the types of things that give PR people and the profession in general a bad name. It makes it appear that we are just there to bend the truth to fit our own ends, which Burson-Marsteller was doing for Facebook.
Their statement shows that they know what they did was bad PR, but it’s a little late for that. They’ve already taken the client and added to negative image that PR can sometimes get. They talk about treating media respectfully, but they did the exact opposite of that for their client before being caught.
Ouch. I dont even know what to say.The PR agency should have known better then to agree to such a request. And to add on to it they allowed a third party blogger gain knowledge of what they were doing. I cant fully blame them because they were doing what the client requested but i blame them for not thinking the plan through and maybe searching for alternatives to present to Facebook instead of spreading lies.Goes to show what people do for money nowadays.
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