Information in the community. The weapon is sharper than a sword!
A certain (and large) informational impact on other people is exerted by the appearance of a person. It’s not without reason that they say: they’re met by clothes,
... my mouth shall not tell a lie, and my tongue shall not utter a lie! ..
Job 27: 4
And one of the first lessons I learned in this area: before preparing any events, you need to carefully select, study and understand the audience you are going to influence. Moreover, the most difficult, probably, is to correctly single out, identify the defining signs and outline its circle as accurately as possible.
The same informational events cannot equally affect different people from different social strata with different interests. Everyone needs something different. And if you clearly defined the goal, then picking up a key to it is already much easier.
Trilobite Master
Job 27: 4
And one of the first lessons I learned in this area: before preparing any events, you need to carefully select, study and understand the audience you are going to influence. Moreover, the most difficult, probably, is to correctly single out, identify the defining signs and outline its circle as accurately as possible.
The same informational events cannot equally affect different people from different social strata with different interests. Everyone needs something different. And if you clearly defined the goal, then picking up a key to it is already much easier.
Trilobite Master
Public Opinion Management Technologies. Not so long ago I entered VO article about Dr. Goebbels as a genius of fascist propaganda. And, yes, of course, he managed to do some in this area. But his role is really far from what it seems to some. Moreover, living in the information society, many of our citizens are still clearly not very well aware of its capabilities. And that is why today in this article, as well as in a number of subsequent ones, this topic will be considered in sufficient detail. Moreover, the story will be started specifically from the "small things", the very such minor PR-events, which, however, are also needed. Well, then we get to events of world significance. Everything has its time!
Personal experience is the foundation of everything!
Is the author capable of such a task? Yes, I can afford it, since from 1995 to 2017 he taught disciplines related to the specialties “PR” (public relations) and “Advertising”, and he wrote just a lot of articles (they can be found and read on eLibrary.ru) on this topic (the effectiveness of work in the Higher School is now assessed by the number and quality of such publications) and a number of textbooks published both in our country and abroad. It turned out that in our University of Penza, the specialty "Public Relations" was opened the third in the country after LETI and MGIMO. So the experience in our department has been very extensive. Well, practical work in this area will be discussed in more detail hereafter.
You sit in the village - learn about PR
I would like to start with how I generally learned about PR. It turned out that when I was young, working as a teacher in a rural school (from 1977 to 1980), for some reason I dreamed about the career of a science fiction writer. And I decided to start with small forms, that is, with stories. He wrote “When you walk” (about a meeting of a village school teacher with an alien on a dirty road), “Are there only seagulls ...” (about Operation “The Seagull” and again the “aliens”) and “If you see a concrete cube!” (about aliens and all sorts of scammers who make money on them), and it was there that I had a specialist in public relations. For God's sake, I don’t remember where I got it from, probably, from some Western NF-book, because then the USSR did not even know such a word. It was only in 1985 that the dissertation was defended that PR was the fabrication of bad imperialists on how to brainwash, intoxicate class-conscious workers, that is, judging by it, it was something like Aunt Nepogodushka from the movie "Mary the Artisan" , where she so powdered her brains that she just repeated: “That will, that bondage - anyway!”
The boss said - subordinates performed!
Well, then I myself began to work at the Higher School of Economics, our department stories The CPSU successfully survived the whole year 1991, but to teach the history of the Fatherland and cultural science to our then boss seemed boring and not very promising. So he opened this specialty, and we, his colleagues, gave Sam Black a book to read “Public Relations. What it is?" I read it and realized that I had been doing this all my life, but did not know about it. So he began to teach the disciplines of this course, taught students and at the same time studied himself, along with them. Well, then everything itself has already gone, gone ...
This book has changed my life in many ways.
There is nothing better than a correct theory!
Now a little theory. One person can control other people by force. But only a few. The more people there are, the less likely he is to force them to obey themselves in this way. But with the help of information dissemination, he can do anything. Because people are aware of its usefulness and seek to receive again and again. Thus, its source gains authority and is listened to, already, in general, and not reflecting, but simply out of habit. Again, there are people who are smart, average, and not-so, and the latter are the most. They know everything to themselves, and although they will never admit it, they will certainly be guided by “opinion leaders” who are chosen according to different criteria. So, if we find such leaders and instill in them the ideas we need, then they will already work for us. Herluf Bidstrup has simply wonderful and very clear pictures on this subject ... And one more important circumstance: smart people like to discuss theories, medium ones - events, and the latter - people. So, all of them need to be given relevant information. The owner of Trilobite (see epigraph) wrote correctly about this!
But the general, so to speak, mass of people is affected by the media: electronic, print, radio, television and even inscriptions on fences! It is proved that in this regard, people are very little different from Chinese radio-controlled cars: you press one button - it goes to the left. To the other, to the right! The main thing is to know which buttons to press. Examples? Yes, any number. From the simplest to the most complex.
Since we are at VO, the military theme should prevail among us. And here we must remember that there was such a British aristocrat Arthur Ponsonby, who wrote the wonderful book "Lies during the war." It was published several times with us, and it can be downloaded and read online in Russian. This is how it looked in English
When they meet on clothes ...
When I was a student, I studied at the local pedyushnik, and there was a lady in our professors. Most of all, she looked like a good-natured hippo from children's comics - the same thirty-three chins and an amazing passion to put fingers together with fingers and a neck and chains, and squeeze her body into patent leather suits and the same stockings. Somehow we survived this varnished “miracle” with my wife, but here our daughter grew up and again got to study with her! Ahead of the exam. We put on some sort of colorful dress, an Indian ivory necklace with elephant figures, the same beads, and a thick bracelet made of copper and again ivory on our arm. And what would you think? She didn’t listen to her, but as she saw all this, she began to ask where she bought it and how much. And they discussed the topic of Indian jewelry for about 20 minutes, and then she glanced at the magazine, and without asking asked “excellent”. Accordingly, she went to a former teacher of history of the CPSU in a gray orphan dress with buttons on her back, her hair in a “bundle” a la Katya Pushkareva, only without glasses. And also - excellent! “Such a modest girl!”
Blikfang. It is impossible to look away!
Then I got acquainted with the theory and practice of blikfang and always advised all my students to use it. Blikfang is something brilliant, some kind of interior or costume detail that attracts attention, subconsciously influencing the one who looks at it. There was a case: one local bank invited me to evaluate the PR-design of their new office. Moreover, in a bad Russian manner, when everything was already ready, and not at the design stage. And I ended up in a gloomy metallic-colored room with blue letters on the walls. And they no longer have the money to fix the fools, they don’t have the money, but ... "Correct us!"
I looked around and realized that I needed a blikfang, otherwise people would be taken away from here to the asylum. Bright, beautiful flower? Yes, but will they be able to care for him? I thought and did it this way: I bought an antique chest in an antique store, put cardboard in it to fill the place, and on top of silver rounds imitating money (to me they were cut from cardboard and pasted with silver paper from chocolates). The result was a chest full of shiny silver coins, and from afar it was impossible to make out that it was not money!
A unique edition of the father of public relations Edward Burneys. The book was written by him in 1923, when he began to teach PR for the first time at Columbia University. Today it can be read in Russian
They came up with a story for him, that it was the chest of the merchant Paramonov, that he was found in the attic of a house where in the old days there was the same bank, and then - blah, blah, blah, but interesting. And what is the result? Already when three TV channels were reporting from this office, one of the operators both pointed the camera at the "blikfang" and could not take it away. And in line, people kept staring at him and asking him, and what it was and went on: “The chest of Paramonov’s merchant ...”, and as a result, the person told others about it (interesting after all!), And this is how free advertising was created!
No matter what people think, the main thing is the result!
It’s also beneficial to wear a blikfang for an exam or a press conference. For a woman, this can be a lurid, “sparkling” brooch on the lapel of the jacket on the right. Because our gaze scans objects on the left. And you need to move your torso a little, so that “it” would shine. 80% of listeners of what the owner of the blikfang says will not hear. They will think: that it glitters there, why it glitters, then we need to look at what glitters, it is necessary, what bad taste, where the youth goes, we were not like that, these are real rhinestones or glass and so on. It’s more difficult with men, they don’t wear brooches, but you can put a hairpin on a tie with a shiny stone. The main thing is that there is an asymmetry.
Does your public relations specialist go to a press conference related to the fact that your company is polluting the river? A gray dress, zero makeup on her face, hair in a bun, glasses like Katya Pushkareva! She goes to a briefing where questions are not asked? A red suit with a neckline to the navel, a skirt “don’t drop anything, drop it - don’t lift it”. All red and stilettos. Checked - it will go like clockwork, and journalists will write "well." Do you know why? And this girl in red will loom before their eyes. And they will think about something completely different!
This book has many authors, and is somewhat difficult to read. But if you master it, then you will know everything about PR and public opinion management techniques. True, in relation to how it was and is taking place in the West
PR in the fight for morality and morality
It happens that JI specialists have to solve rather piquant tasks. There was a case: one company lost revenues. Led by a man over 50, married, two daughters. Everything is OK! What's the matter? They invited the PR man to find, so to speak, what was wrong. And the first rule - any PR campaign begins with research!
So he arranged a survey for everyone, and the respondents were allowed to communicate with the uninvited. He only ridiculed and questioned their words to everyone who told him important things, and to those who smacked obvious rubbish, he said: “You really helped me!” As a result, he found out (which no one suspected at the same time!) That the whole thing was in the new young secretary. Gray in the head, a demon in the rib. And here are the legs from the shoulders, the chest climbs on the nose ... Well, if not ... And the boss didn’t care, employees, too. They began to argue when he was and where ... Well, the thing died out. And what to do? Tell him to fire her? A blow to pride is impossible. But it turned out that opposite is the bank, the owner of which is the same age.
“Take a loan from her! Said the PR man. - You don’t have enough funds for development. In the morning, give her a bouquet, stand at the window and as you will see ... go, give flowers, invite to a restaurant ... "
Another book by E. Bernays, which can be read today in Russian
In the morning, the chef comes with flowers, and the "secretary" thinks she is. And he told her: “This is not for you, this is for business ...” And the young girls who taunt such “gray-headed” ones, they are usually fools. There is a chest, but in the head polystyrene. Well, she’s in a pose ... More - more. Then he made a scandal from resentment! And then the PR man: “How does she compromise you, ah-oh ... you need another person, respectable ...” “Yes, yes, I myself wanted to fire her!” PR man presents him with a kind of Freken Bock, and the job is done. As a result, both the family was saved and the business went well.
But these are just the little things in life. More serious things are to come!
To be continued ...
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