Add Burston Marsteller to the old school PR firms that don’t get it. “According to research from Burson-Marsteller, 31 percent of online public opinion leaders have blogs,” says Idil Cakim of Burston-Marsteller in a DM News article. Where’s the research? It sure isn’t on their website. Who are the “online public opinion leaders” on their list? How did they measure their effectiveness? Where’s the list of their blogs?
Says their website, which comes up about 27 entries down in a Google search on Burston-Marsteller, “Burson-Marsteller is an undisputed leader in the public relations industry.” Hey, if you can’t get your own company name in the top 10 on a search on its name, what could you possibly do for online clients?
UPDATE: I received the following email today, Friday, July 22, four days after this post appeared. Apparently, Burson doesn’t track what is being said about it online on a very regular basis:
Dear Ms. Ochman:
I had originally written the article for Guidewire group. It got published in DM News without my knowledge – which I am not too [sic]unhappy about. I wish I had know and could have provided more background info, like you suggested.
Burson-Marsteller has been researching the online influencer segment since 1999. We have our proprietary study and algorithm to identify this unique psychographic. All info is available here.
And here is a link to our blog, which we have been upkeeping since 2002.
Idil Cakim
Director, Knowledge Development
Burson-Marsteller
Like Ketchum PR, Burston-Marsteller Just Doesn’t Get the Internet
BL Ochman | July 18, 2005 | Permanent Link | Comments (3) | TrackBack (
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If you spelled Burson-Marsteller correctly, you would see that it pops as #1 in a Google search.
Ooops. My spelling was wrong. But I am apparently not the only one, as there were 885 search results on “Burston-Marsteller.”
If they had a clue, they would own that url and re-direct misspellers to their site. Right now, some guy named James Wong owns the Burston-Marsteller url.
Some other misspellings of their name are available. And they need to buy them. Otherwise, someday someone is going to do a parody site.
BL
BL –
Quit hatin’! Not everyone is as cool as you!