Roman Maslennikov - Explosive PR. Secrets of Outrageous PR-Stunts from Russia with Love for Positive News

https://www.rt.com/news/254993-raccoons-destroy-office-moscow/

http://360tv.ru/news/dressirovannye-enoty-isportili-internetoborudovanie-v-magazine-yota-20465/

http://ren.tv/novosti/2015-04-29/enoty-ustroili-debosh-v-stolichnom-magazine-video

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/watch-three-badly-behaved-raccoons-ransack-an-office-in-russia-10218013.html

It was particularly exciting to read about the “damage” done by our animal companions, estimated in GBP.

As performers of that promo action, we were content with sparking a public outcry in Moscow, but we sent shock waves over the world. The client thought this effort was insufficient, however, and we had to stage one more promo event to fully satisfy him, which brought me to an even more exciting experience I’ll soon tell you about.

Incidentally, our team was inspired to create the viral video in a fish shop of Vladivostok airport, where a cat ate delicatessen worth 60,000 rubles (about $2,000 in those days): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqdvk-x2HZg

You may think we mistreated the raccoons by demonizing them. I agree, but for the sake of justice, I must add we also decriminalized them in media. In another promo action two years later, a raccoon from the same company became the animal that saved a clothing boutique from plunder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XszPhXTFO0

And then we allowed raccoons from another company to admire a woman’s tits, but that is a different story.

I personally dislike the news in Russia, with all those car accidents, murders, crashes, and man-caused disasters hitting the headlines. Who needs this depressing stuff? Even Professor Preobrazhensky from The Heart of a Dog after the eponymous novel of Mikhail Bulgakov made a point about the pernicious impact of Soviet newspapers upon digestion. “And God keep you from reading Soviet newspapers before lunch!”

Someone told me it’s a bit different in the US where you hear more positive news.

So, my attorney and I thought of something: the main culprit is the Yandex search engine, most popular in Russia, where the main page always shows the top five news by default. I expressed my discontent in the lawsuit where I claimed I was “growing bald because of bad news,” having attached to it the opinion of a trichologist where he confirmed that stress indeed causes hair loss. It was up to the press to fill in the blanks and connect the dots.

As a result, we had the following publications:

http://mashable.com/2016/03/18/russia-bad-news-lawsuit/#.EKwMdSbuPqm

https://www.joe.co.uk/news/moscow-man-is-trying-to-sue-russias-google-for-publishing-so-much-bad-news-he-became-bald-47814

http://www.sulromanzo.it/blog/diffondi-troppe-notizie-negative-e-allora-ti-faccio-causa

and a lot more.

The guys from Yandex must have found the phrase “Russia’s Google’ as their description particularly hilarious.

Eventually, I got an amazing spin in the international arena and respective new clients to boot.

My friend told me an anecdote about the Russian poet Sergey Yesenin who ordered the maid’s services with his colleague Marienhof in soggy St. Petersburg. Her main service was warming the beds for poets and then leaving.

Four days later, she quit the job because she was flabbergasted that she was never harassed and she hoped this would be the case.

This was a cute anecdote, and I decided to repeat it in modern-day Russia with my client – the landing web page LPgenerator.ru. We came up with the she-is-generator.ru site, found a “heroine” who would be a “cat woman” (or “bed warmer”), and launched this hoax in media: https://life.ru/964200

How many leads (potential queries) do you think she received on the first day? (the right answer: more than 200).

How many clients actually used her services? (the right answer: more than 0).

How much money do you think Viktoria Ivachyova made out of that hoax? (the right answer: more than 100,000 rubles or about $2,000).

These were fees paid to the young entrepreneur by media, foreign outlets prevailing (Chinese and German TV channels).

The result was over 50 publications, of which 15% were foreign press releases:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/meet-worlds-first-professional-bed-9748489?ICID=FB_mirror_main

https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/2779994/worlds-first-bed-warmer-will-slip-between-your-sheets-in-her-pjs-and-let-you-watch-for-65-per-night-but-its-strictly-no-to-sex/

http://10ways.com/profit/alternative-jobs/woman-earns-1350-per-month-warming-beds-with-her-body-heat

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/professional-bed-warmer-charges-65-night-bizarre-new-entrepreneurial-idea-1604865

https://v.qq.com/x/page/o03710lkpwq.html

http://navbharattimes.indiatimes.com/world/asian-countries/meet-the-professional-who-warms-beds-for-a-price/articleshow/56980815.cms

http://www.nai2.com/dailymail/8617.html

http://maharashtratimes.indiatimes.com/lifestyle-news/sex-news/viktoria-ivachyova-believed-to-be-the-worlds-first-professional-human-bed-warmer/articleshow/56981621.cms

http://www.odditycentral.com/news/the-human-bed-warmer-russian-woman-offers-bed-warming-services-for-single-men.html

http://www.bhaskar.com/news/KZHK-meet-professional-bed-warmer-news-hindi-5521933-PHO.html

http://www.emirates247.com/offbeat/this-is-life/woman-becomes-world-s-first-professional-bed-warmer-2017-02-06-1.647720

http://indianexpress.com/article/trending/bizarre/human-bed-warmer-russian-woman-has-a-unique-job-making-beds-cosy-for-hotel-guests-but-its-not-profane-4519747/

http://usfinancepost.com/meet-Viktoria-ivachyova-the-worlds-first-professional-bed-warmer-27916.html

And others which you may google using the “Viktoria Ivachyova bed warmer” query.

It remains a mystery why the client was not happy with that effort.

The same can’t be said about Viktoria!

Contact Zoo Versus Video Studio. How Raccoon Helped Small Business Became World-famous?

And the latest episode: I helped my colleagues seed a story about a contact zoo being at law with a video studio. The point is that in the process of filming a video ad, another raccoon allegedly stripped a bra off the starlet and fell into a shock, refusing food and further engagement. This exasperated the zoo manager who decided to sue the studio.