WhisperGate

Things don’t sink much lower than having the guardians of reputation forgetting that reputation is their sole reason for existence. Despite what some believe, the vast majority of public relations practitioners are not a bunch of smarmy spin doctors. They value nothing more than their ability to be the “Canary in the Coal Mine,” sniffing out the slightest hint of an action that might damage the reputation of their company or their client.  

That’s what makes a blatant attack on Google engineered and carried out by PR giant Burson-Marsteller on behalf of Facebook so mindboggling. Tagged “WhisperGate” by the media –perhaps because of its resemblance to a nasty grade school rumor– it’s hard to understand how anyone thought this was a good idea. The fact that two guys who recently moved into the PR world from fairly senior positions in journalism were badmouthing Google to their contacts in the media makes it even harder to fathom.

What level of hubris made them think they could carry off this kind of nonsense? What journalist or ex-journalist would fail to see this going public and viral in the blink of an eye; as it did? Their phone calls were stupid; pushing their garbage in emails was insane. How long did they think it would take for someone to forward their own words to the world? Who did they think they were?

Of course we have no way of knowing how this all came about, or whose idea it was in the first place. We are not likely to discover how many others –alongside, or up the food chain– were involved. But it does lead us to take a look at Burson-Marsteller. A quick perusal of their history and website leaves one less than impressed with their ethical grounding. To their credit they swore off tobacco last year (2010) after shilling for Philip Morris and other industry players for years. Among other things, they set up what were made to look like independent scientific entities to cast doubt on the dangers of smoking.

They lay claim to crisis management credentials springing from the 1982 Tylenol tragedy in Chicago. In a carefully parsed paragraph they say, “Burson-Marsteller worked closely with Johnson & Johnson.”  To our knowledge all the smarts that have become the gold standard for dealing with this kind of catastrophic happening came solely from J&J. Burson-Marsteller certainly played no part in setting the course J&J chose.   

The Burson-Marsteller Google attack delivered a black eye to every public relations practitioner, the good and the bad. Sadly, the good guys have no way to distance themselves from the smarmy elements in their discipline. As Warren Buffett famously said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it;” in this case for somebody else to ruin it. Burson-Marsteller will shrug off this despicable incident and go on to the next smarmy tactic, seemingly their only regret that they got caught. Meanwhile the good guys will suffer.