Public relations has always been an important part of any Western business concept, but the Internet not only gave it a new boost but also showed the dark side of the phenomenon. Many business entrepreneurs, industry leaders, and entire corporations still do not understand the power of so-called black PR. But they should certainly think about it, as it becomes an important tool in their competitors’ arsenal. Here are some examples of black PR schemes in the UK, USA, China, and Russia.
BLACK PR TECHNIQUES: FOREIGN CAMPAIGN CASES
Country: United Kingdom. Racial discrimination
Technique 1: Manipulate Emotions and Global Issues
Racial discrimination is a global problem that is constantly ignored. Protests span entire countries, and the further they go, the more attention is paid to the racism that exists today. These protests are combined with social media, exposed PR companies, brands, individuals, and actions.
Case study: A highly controversial story was revealed last year about Bell Pottinger – one of London’s leading PR agencies. The agency was being paid £100,000 a month for the creation of tensions over “white monopoly capital” and “economic apartheid” in South Africa. The Public Relations and Communications Association – a British PR organization that also regulates PR in Great Britain – investigated and found this campaign to incite racial tensions to be the most serious violation of ethics in its history. PRCA promptly removed Bell Pottinger from its list. This “black” work has been recognized as one of the most stunning and nightmarish in the history of PRCA.
Country: USA. Battle of the Giants – Facebook VS Google
Tactic 2: Publishing misleading information about competitors
The first and by now the most popular tactic among black PR activists is to publish false or misleading information about their competitors. In a world where almost every customer conducts online research to learn more about people and organizations, false information can wreak havoc and jeopardize the functioning of an entire business.
Case study: Let’s remember how in 2011 Facebook was caught organizing a smear campaign against Google.
Facebook hired a PR firm to throw up the stories that exaggerated concerns about the privacy of Google’s Social Circle product. The PR firm later reached out to the privacy company and asked for their name in the article they wrote. But this same privacy advocate posted all the emails with the PR firm on the Internet, exposing the campaign and, as a result, – Facebook’s involvement.
In the United States, such versions of business or politically motivated manipulation techniques known as the “rat movement” – in fact, this is nothing more than the use of dirty tricks to undermine and discredit the opponents or competitors.
Country: CHINA. Tecent vs. Alibaba
Technique 3: Revealing classified documents
This black PR method mostly comes from the inside of an organization, when current or former employees publishing the internal files and documents to harm the employer. It is often not easy to identify the initiator, so companies need to be careful when it comes to their candidate selection strategy. But it happens that competing companies also follow this method.
Case study: One of the most striking cases of black PR in China occurred in 2014, when the Chinese conglomerate Tencent posted screenshots of Alibaba’s internal emails. Alibaba has successfully posted information about the alleged instability of the management team of WeChat – Tencent’s mobile instant messaging product. Once the story was revealed, Alibaba turned to Sina Weibo, a popular Chinese microblogging website, to rebuff accusations that Tencent was conducting a similar smear campaign against them. Most apotheoses were that in the end neither Alibaba nor Tencent denied the smear campaigns against each other.
Country: RUSSIA. Politics, politics… and again politics
Technique 4: Using propagandists
In Russia, “black” PR has a greater response in politics. Moreover, political communications themselves are a euphemism for political manipulation in the Russian Federation.
Case study: According to Western media analysts and journalist reviews, by far the most bright example is the use of social media propagandists and traditional media to support the presidential narrative that Ukraine is uncontrollable and out of control.
Conclusion
PR is closely intertwined with sustainability, which is essential today to survive in the world of publicity. Some choose one way, the second – less principled – another. Most often, these are the intrigues of dirty manipulations in the political, business, and even social environment.
It is important to remember, that in the first place it is not corporations that suffer from them – but the public, which “swallows” the bait and goes on about the speculations of companies and political parties. Destructive waves of anti-moral and anti-ethical public relations cover the whole society, efficiently manipulating with not only the public trust but also the resources.
That is why international organizations are trying to fight black PR. In Ukraine, we are still far from the creation of such regulatory bodies, but being influenced by foreign trends, we are increasingly inclined towards their methods of using PR for “dark” and unethical purposes.
