Hey guys, sorry it has been so long since my last post, I’ll be
posting another entry sometime this weekend to make up for one of them. BUT I
found an article that uses the same scope that I do in this blog. The article,
written by Guy Berstrom, addresses the incident that Facebook got caught hiring
a PR firm to plant "unflattering stories about Google." Interestingly
enough, I have not seen anything on this circulating Facebook, I only heard
about it when I actually Google search “public relation scandals”
You can access the article at the link below.
http://marketing.about.com/od/crisis_communication/a/facebook-gets-caught-in-pr-scandal.htm
The article asks if hiring a firm to slander another competitor is
a public relations "no-no?" Bergstrom says it is not, they just
should not have been sneaky about it. And I agree, if you recall I used the
GolinHarris pitch booklet as a frame of analysis for some of my previous posts.
A big thing to remember about practicing public relations ethically is that
there is openness and there is transparency. As I've said before openness is
what you tell your audience, transparency is what your audience can find out.
GolinHarris urges that we should have trust in transparency. As a firm,
recognize that we live in a digital age, we leave digital footprints and being
"sneaky" is no longer an option. As an avid Facebook and Google user,
it does not really bother me that Facebook wants to get the edge. Just like
Apple suing Samsung did not bother me.
Bergstrom suggests that Facebook fire the PR agency. I personally do
not think that is necessary, a big part of public relations is image
restoration. So maybe they should keep the agency on board and figure out a way
to slowly but surely regain their audiences trust. But at the end of the
day, this is not a huge deal. I have yet to see anyone boycott Facebook because
they want to get ahead. No one was injured, no had gotten sued (at least at
this moment) and if anything the big wigs at Facebook got a little embarrassed.
Tune in this weekend to read my thoughts on the 5-Hour Energy debacle.
This is really interesting. This is my first time hearing about this, and I agree, I've never seen anything about this going around on Facebook either. How exactly were "unflattering stories about Google" planted? Did the PR firm try to use ads or something like that?
ReplyDeleteThis post informed me on a topic I didn't know had occured. I agree with you that I dont think the PR agency because a lot of things in PR gets sneaky, just like you said. Are there any other examples of when a major company fired their PR because they make one big bad move?
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