Online Public Relations Thoughts

I meant to comment on this two days ago but didn't get to it. There was a comment on it in another blog yesterday. What amazed me is that Burson Marsteller is a respected firm with skilled and intelligent practitioners, yet someone apparently still doesn't understand transparency in the internet age. It is hard to get away with front groups now. Thousands of bloggers, activists and others look for sources of funding and find them. Burson should have known that building a front group for Microsoft was risky.

I would like to think that Burson didn't hide Microsoft's influence but didn't trumpet it either -- sort of a half-transparency. But, that doesn't work once a group's cover is blown in a publication like The Wall Street Journal. I'm sure Burson has good reasons for what it did. It still looks ridiculous -- and sneaky.