Darkness Public Relations

Even if you do not have around influential people from any nationality or religion – do not scold them. Even your staff (if it is of that nationality) can ruin your business. Business in today’s society is too dependent on environment

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This method is also good if you find any audience, which suffers from improper actions by competitors and the audience putting an action against a competitor, but at the same time it is targeting a completely different audience. That is why, it is not necessary to have the facts, compromising the company, for example, in the face of customers. It suffices to find an audience which will be an intermediate between customers and the company and to attack it, and the audience itself will be then attacked by customers.

The method of virtual concept

This method is fully based on the theory of virtual concepts.

The image of any company is based on multiple virtual concepts. Often this concept: reputation, luxury, versatility, trendy, love to the buyer, the popularity among customers, value, etc.

Easy to guess that all of these concepts are enclosed only in our mind, but as a rule, have certain physical evidence, contributing to a better understanding of these concepts. So prestige, for example, may be confirmed by the price of goods, the use of expensive materials, use of the some subject known by many people. At the same time all this is a myth, because often the real cost of lifestyle products is much lower. However, this product sellers want to lay the additional value that the buyer and could take this thing to demonstrate its superiority over other people. By the way, the price of the object actually has no great significance. Often to achieve a high price item it is complemented by unnecessary or almost unnecessary elements. Note that often excavator is more expensive than a sports car, but the prestige of riding on it is questionable, unless someone makes VIP-excavator. But, even it is comfortable to ride such transport, because it safe, so that if you crashed into a house you can break its walls, but not the car. But it is not prestigious.That is why excavator can not be at a high price, but sports car can, because it has a sufficient value of prestige in the eyes of the consumer.

To destroy the myth of the value of the goods you have to consistently attack all components of the virtual concept of «prestige», namely the material constituting the object, the behavior of people associated with it, positive or negative evaluation of the subject, especially the subject of ownership.

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Example. Homeless people in the elite club.

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One of my friends got an order to reduce the level of prestige of a Moscow restaurant-club, which has an excellent reputation among the metropolitan elite. Naturally at the entrance to the club there were face-control and some burly bouncers. And, even simple cars like Lada could not be allowed there.

My friend needed to neutralize the image and prestige of the place.

What did my friend do? One Saturday, when the club met the main visitors, his men, dressed in the VIP-persons clothes, came on a luxury car to the club, then went inside. At the height of the evening they had gone to the bathroom and changed into a homeless people clothes, which means dirty and smelly clothes. The smell was generated specifically for this event. Smelling from head to toe, they went into the room and sat down on the seats. People have started to feel too uncomfortable besides them. Strangely enough, the security did not immediately realize what to do, because these people were already in and ordered dinner, and some have already eaten the dinner. It was too late to do something, because most of the elite has left the restaurant immediately. Their administrators fussed about these «homeless» and wondered how they could entrance the a club.Then they politely asked them to leave the club. A one of the guards tried to heat one of the «homeless’ poeple, but then suddenly two newspaper reporters appeared and had photographed the moment.

On the next day the newspapers had uploaded the pictures of the homeless in the area of the club, and was told that the public looks at expensive restaurants often unconventional. It was also an interview with one of the «homeless» who claimed to have received a great charity, and decided to relax in the restaurant.

The next days to maintain the image, a special person was bringing to the club a special flavour which was able to allocate an unpleasant odor for a long time. They were hiding it in a different places of the club and constantly reminded visitors of the homeless.

When the administration found out a system of tracking visitors with that smell, it was too late already – all the elite of the club moved to another restaurant.

This is certainly not the most beautiful example, but it shows the method in action.

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The method of virtual concepts can be used to create new concepts that will destroy the old concepts and, as a result, your competitors.

Method catcalls

Since ancient times, in the theatres when people couldn’t accept the play, they were throwing tomatoes or eggs on a stage.In addition to the protest these actions hindered the actors to perform the play. Something like that can be used in today’s PR.

For example, you want to paralyze the work of a large supermarket. You can run a large crowd of people there that will create a queue at the box office. Let these people just come to the box office with an impressive amount of goods, knock out huge checks, and then say that they forgot their wallet. Similarly, you can run the crowd, which has something to complain about, or stand in a line to the bathroom.

During demonstrations of similar actions your people can rustle their feet, clapping without any reason (eg: some exact rythm), the inclusion of a siren, etc. Such methods can easily disrupt any speeches. Often when security is trying to break up the protests by using force, it will again just prove, that upper power just doesn’t want this information to be published and they have soething to hide. So, it is necessary for them to prevent the dissemination of information. To do this, you can drown out the speeches siren, which is much cheaper than the speakers used in the rally. Posters can pour paint from a helicopter or light bright searchlight.

The method of administrative resources

This method is probably is the least relevant to the PR, but lobbying of administrative resources is much more often used for black PR. In this case, just the administrative structures are set against a company and with the help of these structures, the company is destructed.

Having someone in the tax office and other authorities can be easily used to ruin your competitor. Many are trying to convince the authorities by using a corruption. This is one of the most common methods of black economic PR in Russia.

In my view this is the most messy PR, not worthy of self-respecting PR – method.

The method of hooks and bait

This method is relatively simple. Information is created to make a trap for the future victim of black PR. Object needs to be lured there and the object creates a dirt by himself. A typical example of such a company had a history in U.S. President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Initially, Clinton’s meeting with her and their romance was organized by the third party. Then another woman accused Clinton in a sexual harassment. This charge was baseless, but the court has asked: «Did you, Mr. President, have an intimate relationship with any women other than your wife?». He replied: «No». He got in a trap from which he could not escape. Then it was proved that he had a relationship with Monica and, it meant that he lied in court under oath, what is illegal.

Very often people create incriminating evidence against themselve in an interview.In the court, the lawyers of defendants recommend them to keep silence, but in contrast to PR you have to speak – and speak properly.

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Example. The construction company is killing it’s workers.

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Director of a large construction company was faced with a whole set of unexpected problems after the accidental death of one of the workers on the construction site.

So, it happenned that there was an accident as a result of bark killed one worker. Typically, these accidents are not a reason to start a black PR campaign, but in this case, someone ordered a black PR against the leadership.

An experienced journalist caem to the director of a company. The journalist could put in the mouth of the interviewee any text. How did he do it? He has asked the questions that already contains the right answer. Trying to answer it, CEO began to repeat certain words and phrases from the questions. As a result of the interview which was published, there were no questions of a journalist left, but only the answers. From this interview, it was possible to conclude that the leaders of the construction company do not care for the lives of their workers, and the availability of cheap labor and other cities do not allow them to grieve the death of a single working stupid worker and do not care about safety measures at the construction sites.

As a result, a negative attitude of customers who buy an apartments, authorities, and employees of the construction company was developed. They attacked them with all sorts of checks, and much of the staff quit their jobs and demanded to compensate various penalties in the court.

They could not soon recover from this blow.

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The essence of the method of «bait and hook» is:

First, you need to develop a separate campaign goal, which will let a competitor to be in a situation where he has to create a dirt for himself. And he can make a real damning action, and independently distribute compromising information about themselves by saying the wrong things.

Then you will receive the necessary compromate and can start your black PR-campaign, based on this blackmail.

Method of public outrage

Many businesses have a lot of things that can make the public angry.For example, it can be a CEO’s too expensive car, a luxury office, enhanced enterprise, environmental emissions, hazardous industry, harassment someone’s rights, salary of staff in the company, the political ambitions of the director, notably business enterprises, etc.

The goal of this method is to find the one object that can can make the public angry. Then disclose facts that disturb the public. Finally, the public anger is out and you have to stretch it for as long as you can.

Methods of virtual blackmail

This method is not based on a fact, but on the alleged desire or thought of anyone. It is always possible to prove the falsity or correctness of any material fact. But it is not almost possible to prove that a person was not thinking about anything. Thoughts within our minds are closed. And they are more closed when they have occurred in the past. So it is always possible to start a Black PR capmapign against any person’s or group’s plans and ideas, which they did not even think about. Or they migh think about, but did not make them public.

Many labor groups spread intrigues, and this is especially characteristic of women’s groups. And I have repeatedly watched literally nest of intrigue in regular education schools and institutions. In these organizations, people get paid a penny, but they have a lot of weaving plots against each other. And it is enough just to say something a little bit negative and it will be treated as if you are his worst enemy and think of his shift. And what it is more interesting, it is that in such groups they often use a completely made-up arguments. But you can say the same, and that is something people thought about or what he was not going to think about, and you just can take an advantage of this fact.

However, what happens between people in person is very different from what is happening in the PR, where the personal contact, usually excludes. In person one can say with a straight face that he’s telling the truth, and he believed, when he saw his expression and tone of voice, which are well known to all the participants of the event. In PR it can not be done in this way.