If PR firms had their own list of Ten Commandments, Thou shall not withhold thy client’s identity would be number one and Thou shall not smear thy client’s competitors would be number two.
No wonder, then, that global PR firm Burson-Marsteller caused an industry uproar when it confirmed yesterday that it was secretly hired to start a whisper campaign to plant negative stories about Google’s social circle privacy practices.
Who is Burson-Marsteller’s mystery client? Facebook – which has received harsh criticism for its own user policies in recent months.
Through a series of aggressive pitches, Burson-Marsteller’s PR people last week asked journalists and bloggers to write negative stories about the Social Circle’s privacy policy, even offering to help write and place the stories in prominent news outlets:
The pitch raised a red flag for Chris Soghoian, who blogs about online privacy:
The Burson-Marsteller rep replied:
Yikes. Looks like someone forgot to check his code of ethics before hitting “Reply.” The incident raises big questions about the ethics and effectiveness of whisper campaigns, especially once the media catch on to your antics (and they will). Soghoian was so offended that he decided to tweet and post the email conversation online. Within hours, the story was circulating the social sphere.
The backlash from the botched campaign seems to have done more damage than good, creating a PR crisis for Facebook and intensifying the rivalry between the two competitors.
What do you think? Are whisper campaigns effective? Are they ethical?