Anton Vuima - Darkness Public Relations

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.

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.

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.

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.