Facebook PR Flap: Thank You Forbes & Jeremy Pepper for Proving I'm Not Crazy. When the whole thing with Facebook and Burston-Marsteller went down, I confess I was a bit confused. As a social media/communications professional I have worked "in and around" PR but not at an agency and I make no claims whatsoever of being a PR pro.
I could have sworn, though, from my capacity as both PR-esque professional and an avid watcher of Mad Men and other fictional accounts of the PR and advertising industries, that smear campaigns were just something PR agencies did. I mean, maybe they don't advertise it, per se, but seriously--political campaigns? What are they other than smear campaigns? Or full-page ads in the Washington Post or other news papers that somberly report how awful the other guy or industry is...tastefully brought to you by the X corporation or industry. To PR pros, undoubtedly there is a huge difference and a professional ethics code and the line between advertising and PR is crystal clear. Facebook’s Google Smear Campaign: Burson-Marsteller Won’t Fire PR Hacks.
The Eric Harroun I knew wanted to fight for justice in Syria, but went into combat alongside Al Qaeda. The United States jailed him as a potential terrorist, and now he has died. I first met Eric Harroun, better known as “The American Jihadist,” over cocktails at a rooftop martini bar in one of Cairo’s Nile-side 5-star hotels. It was July of 2011, and Harroun was recovering from a recent arrest by Egyptian security forces following his involvement in the summer’s anti-military protests.
The conversation was one of fervent indignation and outrage, but also one of paralyzing powerlessness in the face of impunity and injustice. Yesterday, the same combustible combination of emotions— characterized by a tangible sense of conflict, passion, and despair—resurfaced poignantly when his sister announced on Facebook and then confirmed by phone that 31-year-old Harroun died of an overdose in his father’s home in Phoenix, Arizona. The family says the death was an accident.
Facebook Smear Campaign Raises Real Questions About Google Privacy. Facebook has admitted it authorized an effort to raise privacy concerns about a Google product, but says it was not intended as a smear campaign. The social networking giant released a statement acknowledging that it hired PR firm Burson-Marsteller to alert the media about the questionable use of Facebook user information in a little-known Google feature called Google Social Search.
The feature pulls in publicly available data about users from social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, and displays it in the search results of your social connections — often without their direct authorization. Unsavory emails sent to reporters have since surfaced, deeply embarrassing both Facebook and Burson-Marsteller. "Google, as you know, has a well-known history of infringing on the privacy rights of America’s Internet users," a representative wrote in an email to one targeted blogger, Chris Soghoian. Why Facebook's Concerns Are Valid This is, to be clear, in no way illegal. Facebook-Google Privacy PR Smear Is A Campaign In An Epic, Escalating War. So that was a bit embarrassing for Facebook. It appears the company was just caught red-handed trying to surreptitiously engineer a smear campaign about Google and alleged privacy violations.
But despite the amount of egg on Facebook’s face this week, don’t expect this to be the last time the social network tries to convince the world that the search giant is violating fundamental principles of correct behavior. Or vice versa. A battle is brewing between the two companies, but it won’t be a conventional fight between two businesses trying to protect market share. It won’t even been an ideological battle. But first, to recap the current imbroglio. Now, The Daily Beast has revealed that the client behind the whisper campaign is none other than Facebook. The incident, however, reflects a larger phenomenon: The companies, which in principle have separate missions, are beginning to tread on each other’s toes. Facebook makes a lot of money from offering this service.
A lot, as it turns out. B-M Says Facebook Assignment “Should Have Been Declined” News broke last night on The Daily Beast that the client behind Burson-Marsteller‘s bungled Google “whisper campaign” was Facebook. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the social network hired B-M; The Daily Beast writer Dan Lyons says that B-M refused to say until Facebook confirmed the information. A statement PRNewser received via email from B-M this morning reads: Now that Facebook has come forward, we can confirm that we undertook an assignment for that client. The client requested that its name be withheld on the grounds that it was merely asking to bring publicly available information to light and such information could then be independently and easily replicated by any media.
Many media outlets are digging into the details of why Facebook would launch such a campaign, but certainly, reporters are noting that Burson-Marsteller, a top-notch agency, participated in this episode. Dan Lyons writes on The Daily Beast: PR FIRM: Facebook Asked Us To Do Something Sleazy And We Never Should Have Done It. Facebook Smear Campaign Takes War Against Google to Defcon 2: Tech News and Analysis « Burson-Marsteller Statement. Principles in the Facebook-Google PR Brouhaha Come Clean | Liz Gannes | NetworkEffect | AllThingsD. Now that Facebook’s secret PR campaign to question alleged privacy issues in Google’s “Social Circles” feature has seen the light of day, the key parties are owning up to their roles.
Facebook’s statement on the matter only allows that it should have been upfront about being the company behind the pitch: “No ‘smear’ campaign was authorized or intended. Instead, we wanted third parties to verify that people did not approve of the collection and use of information from their accounts on Facebook and other services for inclusion in Google Social Circles—just as Facebook did not approve of use or collection for this purpose. We engaged Burson-Marsteller to focus attention on this issue, using publicly available information that could be independently verified by any media organization or analyst. PR firm Burson-Marsteller says it shouldn’t have taken the assignment: BUSTED: It Was FACEBOOK That Hired A Former CNBC Reporter To Spread Lies About Google.