What on earth has happened to Burson-Marsteller?
Talking about other PR firms is generally something I prefer to avoid. But today I’m making an exception.
In my own CV, the time I spent as Chairman and Chief Executive of B-M in the UK is something I look back on with mixed feelings. I like to think that at Chelgate we do a number of things differently and, I hope, rather better. But I have always regarded that firm as an important, serious minded and professional business . I think too that it deserves great credit for its pioneering work, pushing back the boundaries of our profession and helping to position public relations as a priority at the highest levels of management strategy. And, like many others, I have also always regarded Harold Burson as an outstanding leader of the profession - a man of decency, high intelligence and rock solid ethics.
So it’s with sour distaste that I read the breaking news of B-M’s central role in the sleazy Facebook ”black PR” secrecy scandal. Quite simply, this is not the way that B-M would have operated in the days when I knew it well, and I am sure that it is not an approach which Harold Burson would have condoned.
But let’s be clear, I’m not condemning negative PR. I wouldn’t like to see it becoming a day-to-day part of our professional service, but there are times when it can have its place. The global campaign Chelgate ran against the Mugabe administration in Zimbabwe is something I look back on with pride, and I believe was fully, resoundingly justified.
But the “Save Zimbabwe” campaign was not conducted from the shadows. People knew who we were and what we were about. In fact, given the death threats I received on an almost weekly basis, we might have had more reason than many to keep our role obscure. But how can you accuse others of dishonesty and falsehood if you are not prepared to be open and truthful yourself?
And nor do I feel that refusal to disclose a client’s identity is, in itself, reprehensible. At Chelgate we have a number of clients whom we have never disclosed. These clients come to us in confidence. We work with them, we advise them, we develop strategies on their behalf, and all of this, I believe, is a matter between those clients and ourselves. We don’t reveal their identities, and we don’t disclose the nature of our work. But nor do we publicly represent them.
On the other hand, when we act for a client, when we argue their case to the media, or solicit the support of politicians; or when, for example, we engage with an NGO, a local council or an academic institution on their behalf, in fact, whenever we act as the go-between for our client with any third party, then of course we indicate who we are acting for. Any other approach would be furtive and creepy. And that’s not howe professional PR should be.
It has been suggested that at least some of the information that B-M was hawking to its contacts was not merely secretly sourced, but also actually false and misleading. I have no idea if this is true. For all I know, that’s negative PR from the other side. Once the paranoia box is open, its difficult to close it again. But that’s not really the point here. In this grubby little attempt to seed negative stories without disclosing their source, they were denying the media (and that means the public, and that means you and me) the opportunity to assess the value of those stories. If you don’t know the source, you can’t judge motive. In this case, source and motive were absolutely central to the story; so central, I would suggest, that the story itself becomes incomplete and misleading if that information is withheld.
Throughout its history, the PR profession has struggled with the damage caused by its grubbier practitioners - the PR hacks, the press agents, the fly-by-night corner shops who live by false promises, operating in the shadows, spinning half truths or downright falsehoods. But that struggle , generally, has been a successful one. And it is firms like Burson-Marsteller who deserve the credit for establishing the profession as an ethical, valuable and often admirable part of the management process. They have led by example. But if senior B-M professionals are now seen to be operating like shadowy, backstreet spin merchants, you have to wonder about the continuing value of that example.
I expect - I hope - that this will be seen to be an aberration; that the Burson-Marsteller management will both condemn this action by some of their staff, and apologise without reserve for what they have done. I expect too that they will explain clearly and publicly what they are doing to ensure that this kind of thing can never happen again. If they do not; if they are in any way half-hearted in their apology and their recognition of fault, then it’s a black day for the PR profession. Because Burson-Marsteller leads by example.
Terence Fane-Saunders
Those are good thoughts, Mr. Fane-Saunders. But isn’t it interesting that the level of sleaze at B-M has increased markedly since Mark Penn became CEO? The fish usually rots from the head.
I worked in PR for years, and bottom feeders are pretty common, IMHO. Just look at word of mouth marketing folks stuffing the ballot boxes on product reviews. Plus sending products to bloggers, who don’t tell anyone they got them for free. Slime.
Bennie,
Kettle, pot, black. Declare your true identity and your interest. Mr. Fane-Saunders put his name to this but you are doing precisely the same as those you purport to criticise.
Padraig McKeon
Gosh, for a while there Padraig, I thought you were suggesting that Bennie had written my blog! I can be slow before my second coffee. But you are quite right. I think Bennie the Biker may be a little bit of a nidget. As you say, he’s doing exactly what he condemns. Stabbing from the shadows. But then, one of Chelgate’s most successful pro bono triumphs was our campaign against bikers……..
If I had one billion dollars to donate to charity anonymously but wanted to pay your agency to garner PR in the media for how the money was being used (perhaps for the purpose of promoting the causes I care about, such as fighting Malaria, to governments, NGOs etc etc.), I guess you would refuse the brief. Or you would have to stop pretending that it is in some way immoral and unethical to act as a go-between in the PR field without revealing the client’s identity. You would of course, have to condem any agency which did pick up the brief if you do indeed believe what you’ve written in your post above. I believe that your arguments against BM are disingenuous. There is a case to made against what BM did, but you’ve not made it. It was clear that they were acting for a client. They issued a health warning to the blogger to double check their facts (all of which were in the public domain) and to assess the degree to which he agreed with them. I’ve seen no credible evidence that they made up any facts or told any lies. They broke their own firm’s code of conduct, sure. Their tactics were not smart, sure. It all backfired, sure. But that requires a different critique to the one you have provided.
Now that really is a pretty desperate defence !
Imagine if you can that you have a code of ethics that you try to live by. And imagine that someone offered to give a billion dollars to charity if you agreed to break that code in some way, just once. If you accepted the offer, does that invalidate the code? Does it mean you were wrong to live by it, or to speak up in its defence? Or that you can never speak out against those who breach it? Of course not. B-M were wrong to do what they did. And the fact that I (or anyone else) might be tempted to do the same for a billion dollars given to charity would not have made it any less wrong. I’m no closer to sainthood than the next man, but we do try to run a business that reflects the ethics we believe in. And it may not have been a billion dollars, but a couple of years ago or so, we did turn down an account worth more than $1 million, just because we didn’t approve of their ethics.
I think if B-M or their supporters really want to argue that what they did was just fine, they’ll need something a little more robust than this desperate little line.
You seem to think that they merely broke their own code of conduct. But that code of conduct is not just some private, internal arrangement. It sets out, publicly, what their firm believes to be right and wrong. And that’s in line with what what most others in the profession believe to be right and wrong. Breaching the Code was not just a private, internal matter. They were breaching accepted norms of ethical behaviour which the code reflected..
When they concealed the identity of the client, they were acting in a way which I believe was unethical, because they withheld information vital to an informed assessment of their story. As I wrote in my blog:
“In this grubby little attempt to seed negative stories without disclosing their source, they were denying the media (and that means the public, and that means you and me) the opportunity to assess the value of those stories. If you don’t know the source, you can’t judge motive. In this case, source and motive were absolutely central to the story; so central, I would suggest, that the story itself becomes incomplete and misleading if that information is withheld.”
I admire your enthusiasm for the B-M cause, Paul. But as a defence of their actions, in the minds of most people, this just won’t wash.
I’m not for the BM cause, as such. BM was hoisted on its own petard, that’s their problem. Its code of conduct was revealed as marketing spin. But the truth is that there are sometimes good reasons not to reveal a client’s identity or the full facts. a/ the veracity of something does not depend upon who says it (perhaps the moral authority does, but that’s a different issue…and it was BM’s problem with FB). b/ PRs hide names and facts and details behind things all the time - that goes to the heart of financial PR, contracts and deal making….and there is nothing unethical about that (in fact full transparency would be unethical, because it mostly calls for betraying client-confidentiality). Naming the client is not a principle and it is not what keeps PR clean. Last, your your last point is very BM - the perception of most people gets precedence in your book over the facts and the bigger challenge of redefining how things are perceived.