Facebook secretly paid Burson-Marsteller in 2011 to plant negative stories about Google's privacy practices, then denied running a "smear campaign" once reporters traced the effort back to its source. The plan collapsed in days. Burson's own outreach emails became the story, and Facebook was forced into a public admission that damaged both companies' credibility.
What did Facebook and Burson-Marsteller do to Google?
Facebook hired the PR firm Burson-Marsteller to pitch reporters and bloggers on a story criticizing a Google feature called Social Circle, without disclosing that Facebook was the client. Burson went further than a pitch: it offered to ghostwrite an op-ed and place it in outlets including The Washington Post, Politico, and The Huffington Post, according to TechCrunch's May 12, 2011 report.
The target was narrow. Social Circle showed Gmail users who they were connected to across the web. Burson's pitch framed this as a privacy violation serious enough to warrant press investigation, despite Burson-Marsteller's own code of conduct barring work "intended or designed to mislead."
How did the campaign fall apart?
Privacy blogger Christopher Soghoian rejected Burson's ghostwriting offer and published the firm's emails instead of taking the assignment. CNNMoney's May 12, 2011 account traces how the story unraveled from there: USA Today reported on an anonymous whisper campaign against Google, and the Daily Beast's Dan Lyons identified Facebook as Burson's undisclosed client.
Once the client was named, the story shifted from a privacy dispute to a story about deception. Burson had refused to name its client to the journalists it pitched, which is what triggered the backlash from media ethics commentators.
What did Facebook and Burson-Marsteller say afterward?
Neither company apologized outright. A Facebook spokesperson told CNNMoney the company "wanted third parties to verify that people did not approve" of Google's data collection. The same statement conceded Facebook should have made its involvement public from the start rather than pitching the story anonymously through Burson.
Burson-Marsteller spokesman Paul Cordasco told Fox News the assignment was "not at all standard operating procedure" for the firm. Cordasco went on to say the firm should have turned down the assignment on those terms, an admission that stopped short of calling the campaign itself wrong.
What happened to Burson-Marsteller since 2011?
Burson-Marsteller no longer exists under that name. WPP merged Burson-Marsteller with Cohn & Wolfe in 2018 to form Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW), according to WPP's February 2018 merger announcement. In January 2024, WPP merged BCW with Hill & Knowlton into a single agency called Burson, operational from July 2024 and led by global CEO Corey duBrowa, per WPP's January 2024 announcement.
The firm's founder, Harold Burson, died in 2020 at age 98. The agency that ran the Google campaign is now three mergers removed from the name on the 2011 headlines, a detail worth naming explicitly since search results and AI answers on this topic still reference "Burson-Marsteller" as if it were current.
What does this case teach communications teams today?
Undisclosed client work collapses the moment a journalist asks who is paying for it. Burson's approach depended on reporters not asking, or not caring. Christopher Soghoian asked, and the campaign ended within days of that first email.
A non-denial delivered as a statement reads as confirmation. Facebook's line that no smear campaign was "authorized or intended" did not dispute a single fact reporters had already confirmed. Readers and journalists treated it as an admission, not a defense.
The case sits alongside a separate 2015 episode in which APCO Worldwide represented Facebook while publicly criticizing it, a different firm and a different conflict, but the same underlying problem: a PR firm's public statements and its client relationship pointing in opposite directions. Both cases sit inside the broader Facebook PR case archive, and the discipline of pre-clearing statements before a crisis breaks is covered in EPR's crisis communications pillar.
Did Facebook admit to running a smear campaign against Google?
Facebook denied authorizing a "smear campaign" but confirmed it paid Burson-Marsteller to pitch negative stories about Google's Social Circle feature without disclosing Facebook as the client, according to Facebook's own May 2011 statement reported by CNNMoney.
Who exposed the Facebook and Burson-Marsteller campaign?
Privacy blogger Christopher Soghoian published his email exchange with Burson-Marsteller after the firm asked him to publish a ghostwritten anti-Google op-ed. The Daily Beast's Dan Lyons then identified Facebook as the undisclosed client behind the campaign.
Does Burson-Marsteller still exist?
No. WPP merged Burson-Marsteller into Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW) in 2018, then merged BCW with Hill & Knowlton in 2024 to form a single agency called Burson, led by global CEO Corey duBrowa.
What is the PR lesson from Facebook's Google smear campaign?
Undisclosed client relationships collapse once a journalist asks who is paying for a pitch. A statement that avoids disputing the facts functions as an admission, not a defense, in the eyes of reporters and readers. Last updated: August 28, 2026. Part of the Facebook and Meta hub on Everything-PR. Related: Facebook PR: 15 Years of Brand Campaigns and Crises and Crisis PR.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
