PR Case Study: Facebook & Burson-Marsteller Smear Google Campaign

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Today I’m very happy to present 102nd Blog ‘Case Study: Facebook & Burson-Marsteller Smear Google Campaign. Since, in this case study, an un-ethical practice of FB and BM has been discussed therefore it’s my duty to share with you the meaning of ethics and PR Ethics.

Friends, Ethics is defined as that branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions. To elaborate further; it is the consequence of a conduct that determines ethically e.g. when the consequences range from being harmless to being beneficial we consider it ethical or right. If the results are harmful, it is considered wrong or unethical.

However the concept of right or wrong varies with time, place and situation. They evolve over a period of time and cannot be applied uniformly as they are relative concepts. Behavior that is considered unethical by one society or a generation may be quite acceptable to another. International Code of Ethics was adopted by the Council of International Public Relations Association (IPRA) at its meeting in Athens held in 1965. Because of this fact, this code is often referred to as the Code of Athens. This constitutes IPRA’s moral charter, and its principles have been inspired by the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

CODE OF ETHICS:

1.      Considering that all member countries of the United Nations Organizations have agreed to abide by its Charter which reaffirms “its faith in fundamental human rights in the dignity and worth of the human person” and having regard to the very nature of their profession, Public Relations practitioners in these countries should undertake to ascertain and observe the principles set out in the chapter.

2.      Considering that, apart from “rights”, human beings have not only physical or material needs but also intellectual, moral and social needs and that their rights are of real benefits to them only in so far as needs are essentially met.

3.      Considering that, in the course of their professional duties and depending on how these duties are performed, Public Relations practitioners can substantially help to meet these intellectual, moral and social needs.

4.      Considering that the use of techniques enabling them to come simultaneously into contact with millions of people gives PR practitioners a power that has to be restrained by observance of strict moral code.

Foreword:

In the world of digitalization, there are only a handful of people who are not on Facebook, which is a social networking website owned by Facebook now Meta. Mark Zuckerberg, along with other three Harvard University undergraduates, launched Facebook in February 2004. Facebook is free to use platform for socializing and networking. Account holders can create pages, upload photos, join established communities, or start their own community.

When it comes to social media channels, Mark Zuckerberg owned Facebook is the market leader worldwide. The platform’s growth is the most notable one. Facebook’s constant improvement of the system through updates, new tools, and tweaks are also worth noting as it makes Facebook an attractive marketing tool for any organization.  With roughly 2.96 billion monthly active users as of the third quarter of 2022, Facebook is the most used online social network worldwide.

Google's success originated in one simple insight from its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin that the sprawling, chaotic mass of material that was cascading onto the World Wide Web could be tamed by ranking search results according to their popularity. They haven't looked back, making millions from online advertising and embracing some of the most challenging new ideas in the world of technology. Google today is not merely a search engine nowadays but an inextricable part of our lives. The age of information and Google are going hand in hand. Google's story from a search engine to creating monopolies in every other industry has been one of the most innovative stories in the business world.

Google+ Social Circle was a social network owned and operated by Google. The network was launched on June 28, 2011, in an attempt to challenge other social networks, linking other Google products like Google Drive, Blogger and YouTube. The service, Google's fourth foray into social networking, experienced strong growth in its initial years, although usage statistics varied, depending on how the service was defined. Three Google executives oversaw the service, which underwent substantial changes that led to a redesign in November 2015. Due to low user engagement and disclosed software design flaws that potentially allowed outside developers access to personal information of its users the Google+ developer API was discontinued on March 7, 2019, and Google+ was shut down for business and personal use on April 2, 2019.

Burson-Marsteller, a part of Young & Rubicam Group, a subsidiary of the WPP Group, is one of the world's largest PR companies. In a listing of PR companies with crisis capabilities, the American Meat Institute listed Burson-Marsteller as having made its name in crisis communications during the Tylenol tampering case. According to The Guardian, the world's biggest PR Company was employed by the Nigerian government to discredit reports of genocide during the Biafran war, the Argentinian junta after the disappearance of 35,000 civilians, and the Indonesian government after the massacres in East Timor. It also worked to improve the image of the late Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu and the Saudi royal family.

 

The Case Study

The present case study relates to more than a decade back. Google (1998) and Facebook (2004), with the passage of time, became well-known competitors of each other. Facebook opted to run a campaign designed to highlight negative components about Google. Facebook recruited Burson-Marsteller to pitch the stories to journalists and high-profile technology companies, focusing on Google’s Social Circle Google+, which tracks data activity through social media of Google users. Burson-Marsteller pitched the story without disclosing who their client was and even offered to help an influential blogger write a Google-bashing op-ed, which it promised it could place in media outlets like The Washington Post, Politico, and The Huffington Post.

Friends, Facebook secretly hired a PR firm to plant negative stories about Google, the search giant in the print media. The mystery was unfolded by The Daily Beast in Silicon Valley - San Jose, California that somebody had hired Burson-Marsteller, a top PR firm, 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 media outlets like The Washington Post, Politico, and The Huffington Post. But, the plot backfired when the blogger turned down Burson’s offer and posted the emails that Burson had sent him. It got worse when USA Today broke a story accusing Burson of spreading a whisper campaign” about Google “on behalf of an un-named client. While fingers pointed at Apple and Microsoft, The Daily Beast discovered that it's a company nobody suspected ‘Facebook’.

Confronted with evidence, a Facebook spokesman confirmed that Facebook hired Burson, citing two reasons: First, because it believed that Google is doing some things in social networking that raise privacy concerns; second, Facebook resents Google’s attempts to use Facebook data in its own social-networking service.

Google, the search giant, viewed Facebook as a threat, and was determined to fight back by launching a social-networking system called “Google Social Circle”, which lets people with Gmail accounts, see information not only about their friends but also about the friends of their friends, which Google calls “secondary connections.” Burson, in its pitch to journalists, claimed Google’s Social Circle was “designed to scrape private data and build deeply personal dossiers on millions of users in a direct and flagrant violation of Google's agreement with the FTC.

The story gained wider attention when USA Today reported that two PR flacks from Burson, former CNBC tech reporter Jim Goldman, and John Mercurio, a former political reporter had been pushing reporters at USA Today and other outlets to write stories and editorials claiming Google was violating people’s privacy with Google’s Social Circle. The mess was embarrassing for Facebook, which had struggled at times to brand itself as trustworthy. But even more so for Burson-Marsteller, a huge PR firm that has represented lots of blue-chip corporate clients in its 58-year history.

What really seems to be angering Facebook is that some of the stuff that pops up under “secondary connections” in Google’s Social Circle is content pulled from Facebook. In other words, just as Google built Google News by taking content created by hundreds of newspapers and repackaging it, so now Google aims to build a social-networking business by using that rich user data that Facebook has gathered. Facebook claimed that Google had violated Facebook’s terms of service when it used Facebook member data in that way.  

Basically, both the companies were vying to see who will grab the lion’s share of online advertising. At that time Facebook had 600 million members and information on who those people were, who their friends were, and what they liked. That data facilitated the Facebook to sell targeted advertising. It also made Facebook a huge rival to Google and it was hard to say whether Google would ever be able to crack Facebook’s grip on social networking.

According to a statement released by Facebook "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 Circle 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. The issues are serious and we should have presented them in a serious and transparent way.”

Burson-Marsteller declined to comment on the above statement and instead deferred to the following statement: "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. Any information brought to media attention raised fair questions, was in the public domain, and was in any event for the media to verify through independent sources. 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."

To conclude;

Facebook, the social-networking company secretly hired Burson-Marsteller, a PR firm to push stories critical of Google's privacy practices. But the strategy backfired when bloggers and journalists disclosed Facebook's behind-the-scenes role, forcing the company to explain its tactics. Burson-Marsteller confirmed that it is no longer working with Facebook to promote the company's position against Google's social media venture Social Circle. Both Facebook and Burson-Marsteller admitted in statements that the strategy was misguided and should not have been undertaken.

When the story broke in the media, there was strong criticism of both Facebook and Burson-Marsteller for what many deemed to be a smear campaign. Facebook responded in an official statement saying: "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. The issues are serious and we should have presented them in a serious and transparent way."

Perhaps the most interesting part of this case study, from the perspective of PR ethics, is why a leading PR firm would participate in a campaign of this nature. In response, the Chief Executive of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), Rosanna Fiske, issued a statement to address these ethical concerns. She focused on the lack of disclosure as being a deceptive practice that violated the PRSA code of conduct. In addition, she pointed out that when deception is used as a core part of delivering a message, the public begins to question everything ever communicated: "When you are following misleading practices, the message is tainted," she said. Consumers "wonder what else they have done that perhaps I shouldn't trust."

Echoing the general consensus of unethical practices, Burson-Marsteller eventually parted ways with their client, Facebook. Reflecting on the situation, a spokesperson for the agency said Facebook: "requested that its name be withheld on the grounds that it was merely asking to bring publicly available information to light." But, he added, doing that was "not at all standard operating procedure and is against our policies, and the assignment on those terms should have been declined.”

The case study has addressed the purpose of PR ethics being the process of determining right from wrong, and the applied ethical obligations of PR professionals based on the place they hold in society. This is a classic case example of the reason PR professionals need to ground their practice in sound ethical decision making. In an industry with mixed-motives, serving clients, the public, and the profession, PROS must practice PR with the highest levels of integrity and ethics in order to maintain trust.

Thank you for reading the blog.

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Reference:

https://pagecentertraining.psu.edu/public-relations-ethics/introduction-to-public-relations-ethics/lesson-1/case-study/

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-google-lies-2011-5?IR=T

https://www.prweek.com/article/1264310/burson-marsteller-facebook-part-ways