Anton Vuima - Darkness Public Relations

After refusing the complain by Unilever, P & G began an active black PR campaign. In April 27, 1994 in the Danish press reports that the powder Power can destroy a fabric. This message came from the person from P & G company. In April 29 Unilever held a press conference denying all the complaints of P & G and reported that they were going to sue P & G.

In response, P & G hired a Rowland Company for massive PR campaign. The latter came into contact with all the European Association for the rights of consumers, manufacturers of washing machines, a variety of retailers and other public organizations.

Many of these organizations have been doing actively the briefings, press conferences and show the samples of fabric damaged by Power powder. As a result, photos of damaged fabric reached many major newspapers and magazines. Sales volumes of new powder began to fall with a great speed.

Environmentalists accused in Sweden Power, that he had put the national dress in a danger.

After all these PR campaigns, which was stretching for several years, P & G were able to achieve the destruction of the powder and the Power was withdrawn from the market.

It is not important whether the Power is actually harmful to the fabric or it is an invention of chemists from P & G, but he remained an important fact, that finding the real incriminating facts can literally give away a competitor, causing consumers to question the validity of the quality of the products of competitors.

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Very often PR companies are used by dependent or independent civil society. They can be used to share and create information and PR-with these same organizations tend to create newsworthy information. Sometimes public organization established specifically for specific PR-campaign.

We can say that most of the public institutions, even in its title implies fighting for something or someone’s rights protection, and thus a tool of black PR. Let us remember their names: Society for Consumer Protection, Environmental Protection Society, a society «Soldiers’ Mothers», Society for the Protection of women’s rights, etc. Yes they are just created for black PR. Many, very many such associations are fighting for something and, as a rule, information methods. It is just that the statute does not write: «The implementation of black PR».

There is a funny coincidence. The most common translation of words into Russian PR – Public Relations. But can it exist without communication with the public social organizations? And in white and black, they are essential.

An extremely important issue in black PR is choosing the target audience. Attacked object usually surrounded by the following audiences:

His clients.

Its competitors.

His companions.

State institutions with which objects interact.

Its staff.

Its suppliers.

Residents living near the company or somehow forced to interact with it.

Relatives of employees of the enterprise.

In fact, if the objective is the destruction of business of a competitor, you can attack any of the following target groups or all together.

A common mistake is to launch an attack on any one of the targets without analyzing all possible attacks. As a rule, before the attack, unless you have a particular interest (for example, reduce the number of customers from a competitor). That is why, if the purpose of your next attack does not dictate to you strictly a certain audience, you have to analyze all the available audience and how to attack them and how hey will attack in reply.

Of course, you can analyze the audience by inference and analysis of your knowledge, but it is better still to conduct a thorough investigation of the audience. How to do it? In fact, no need to immediately rush to do surveys or anything like that. Remember, all you need is to know more about the target audience surrounding the object of your attack and it can be hundreds of different ways, including those that are not described in any of the existing books.

Still, I recommend you a few ways to study target audiences:

· Open source and database. It is often about your competitor and his interactions with customers, competitors, and all other target groups. It can be found in the Internet. You just go there and consistently seek data on each of the target audiences of competitor, it is basically everything that they write about him. This data can be in the forums, in newspapers, magazines, etc. As the search engines, I recommend metabot.ru. Also, there are many databases and periodical directories. Typically, you can find a lot of information in the public domain, and this information may be sufficient for effective PR-campaign.

· Part of classified information. If the analysis of the open source did not give significant results, and you feel that for effective black PR campaign there is clearly not enough data, you can proceed to a more detailed analysis of the audience and competitors. The easiest way to study part-public information activities in the «skin’ of a customer. Nothing prevents you from becoming a potential customer or a competitor and build information from the first hand. Very often operate under the client can find the most unexpected things. Apart from the role of «client» you can act under a journalist or writer. Find the one legend that will give you access to the maximum amount of information. There are many versions of these legends and most of them are illegal. Who can interact them from outside the company? Think about who can apply there without any formal authority? Naturally, being a representative of law enforcement or tax authorities can get access to all information, but it is illegal if you are not an employee of one of these organizations. However, nothing prevents you to be:

– Job seeker in the firm,

– courier to deliver pizzas by mistake (if you want it to do quite officially, create a firm delivered the pizza)

– chance to get acquainted with any of the companies on vacation

– sales agent for advertising space,

– the wholesale dealer

– Partner Director of bowling (ie, how would you do with it once played)

– representative of the company, which investigates public opinion

– representative of a company that wants to offer something

etc.

Next source is classified information. Typically, such information is not entirely legal. However, detective agencies, and various other offices can collect them and readily provide. You can also arrange your agent to the target audience in order to gather information. By the way, developing advertising campaigns by a company, often adopting the so-called cool hunter (cool hunters) in youth and other target audiences. These people are being introduced to the youth party and trying to figure out fashion, and what is in terms of the audience’s great, and what is not so. By the way, this is very good for business, because the error in this activity often leads to the tragic consequences. Distracted from the topic, said that several years ago, a French firm just had to stop running on the fact that she starred an advertising roller, which was like a stylishly dressed, but from the point of view of young people on it were not the «antlers» pants, so it was not so fashionable. As a result, advertising did not to succeed.

When you are conducting a research, do not place any particular purpose. For example, do not look for «what would I find this to discredit a competitor.» Look just for more information.

The method of compromising.

You run some information that raises doubt in the target audience of the competence of your opponent. Moreover, with this method it is necessary to cause doubt in the competence of the enemy, and not doubt in the competence of the charges.