Stories about the practice of "absolute power"
Still from the 1997 film "The Trickster" / "The Tail Wags the Dog" / "Wag the Dog" by Barry Levinson, based on the book "American Hero" by Larry Beinhart, republished in 2005 as "Wag the Dog: A Novel". Starring Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman. A girl allegedly from Albania is being filmed for News... She has a bag of chips in her hands
But do you know how strong we are, Basmanov?
Not by army, no, not by Polish help,
A opinion; Yes! popular opinion.
"Boris Godunov" A.S. Pushkin
Not by army, no, not by Polish help,
A opinion; Yes! popular opinion.
"Boris Godunov" A.S. Pushkin
People and story. There are several PR rules that are very simple but effective. A real PR man should not tell deliberate lies. He must achieve a positive opinion of people about the subject. Because the power of power lies in opinion, as A. S. Pushkin said so well in “Boris Godunov.” True, today there are many more opportunities to influence this opinion than before. This is what we will talk about today, continuing the theme of PR stories in our country that can be told about today.
And it so happened that in the mid-90s, presidential elections in Russia were to take place, in which as many as five candidates participated: Yeltsin, Zyuganov, Yavlinsky, Zhirinovsky and Lebed. And now in the next city of Ensk the question arose of how to help Yeltsin get elected without attracting large financial investments and relying solely on “popular opinion.”
A survey was conducted in which people were asked the following questions: what color, smell, taste, tree, animal and car is associated with this or that candidate. That is, the “method of free associations” was used, when a person is confident, but his consciousness is not influenced in any way. In fact, the brain remembers everything and... gives out its subconscious vision of the “problem”.
Everyone saw Yeltsin on TV in a black formal suit. Hence, the majority of respondents identified its color as black. The Swan, of course, was white, Zyuganov was red, and Yavlinsky was green, the color of his stupid green apple. It is clear that Lebed is a swan, and Yeltsin is a bear. Yeltsin's car is a tank, because everyone remembered how he tank distributed leaflets, and Zhirinovsky - a Mercedes, and Lebed - an armored personnel carrier, because he is a general! Again, Zyuganov's color was red, and to most he smelled... of blood. What else?
And here she is already on the screen. A bag of chips turned into a white cat, which she saved - “After all, people love children and animals.” Interestingly, the cat was first tabby, but the president wanted a white one!
And so, when the results of the survey were summed up, it turned out that Yeltsin dominated in all respects. The color is black, it erases all colors, the tree is oak, the animal is bear, the smell is vodka (the original folk drink), the car is a tank! You can vote for this one.
But how to vote for the green sour apple, the “swan bird” and the “brown Zhirinovsky”? And about Zyuganov, one interviewee wrote that he associates him with the smell of cat urine, and for him General Lebed smells like gasoline. And it was precisely these words of his, and it was indicated that this was the opinion of one person, that were placed in the title of the article, replete with graphs and diagrams. That is, everything was strictly scientific.
However, a person who read this article to the end received a powerful charge of mental images and subsequently reasoned only with them. It is clear that not everyone was “like that”. But there were about 80% of them, so those who were not affected by it and who remained “independent” could simply be ignored. Their votes no longer decided anything!
After the first round, two people remained: Yeltsin and Zyuganov. And then, in the photo of a mass of articles “Vote with your heart, not with your mind”, “Vote with your mind, not with your heart”, “Vote... vote, vote...” an article appeared: “So that we don’t go extinct like dinosaurs!” And it’s clear that everyone read it. It’s interesting, because the theme of death in a person’s subconscious is dominant, only then comes the theme of reproduction.
The article said that in Moscow there was a research institute where they built the “time machine” Lovondatr-7 (which was actually written about by the Tekhnika-Molodezhi magazine), and that it was still not working well. But what's the matter? Then there will be Lovondatr 10, 12, 25...
And then, if you don’t vote for Yeltsin now, then those people in whose hands it is, will go back to 1880 to the village of Kokushkino, where Volodya Ulyanov drowned in the river, but was saved by a certain passer-by. And so they will first find out who saved him, and then... they will once again move into the past and invite him to drink beer at the tavern. Meanwhile, Volodya will drown! And there will be no revolution, nothing, and all current people will become different, that is, they will die as individuals.
So, to prevent this from happening... Well, then, it’s clear what was discussed.
For some reason, the article had a particularly strong effect on retired grandmothers, who apparently had read “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells in their youth. They called the newspaper and the FSB with a demand to “stop”, but... what could be stopped? Even the local Communist Party of the Russian Federation was unable to sue the author, because half of the article was a retelling of material from “Technology for Youth,” and the second began with the words “I think,” and thinking cannot be prohibited by law.
As a result, Yeltsin received a certain, but quite decent increase in votes in the Ensky region without any administrative pressure.
Here, in the same Ensk, the time has come for the Democratic governor to be re-elected, and Viktor Ilyukhin, a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, decided to run for his place. He arrived in Ensk and began to convince everyone how good he was. He came to meet with the “people” and to Ensky State University. There they gathered “the entire tower” together with the rector, and for the sake of mass participation they brought in a stream of students, to whom at that very time the PR and advertising teacher was giving his lecture.
And Ilyukhin began to tell... how “bad Americans” are and how they want to harm us all. And he didn’t say a word about what he was going to do for the city and region after becoming governor. But you can’t do that, the people who will vote for you wear their shirts closer to their bodies, and it was their needs that he should have talked about. But he didn't say a single word.
Here a certain “hundred-year-old grandfather” (a veteran of all wars and labors) rises and, rattling the iconostasis of orders and medals, says that, they say, thank you, “you opened our eyes.”
Ilyukhin was delighted and asked: “Are there any other questions?!”
"Eat!" - the PR teacher answers, gets up and says: “You came to us for votes (ah-ah, what cynicism, isn’t it, good politicians don’t talk about this), but why didn’t you tell us anything that you would give us? what if we give them to you? Do you know who, for example, was the first to vote for Hitler in Germany in 1929 and why?”
It is clear that Ilyukhin did not know this, he thought that the brain-draining chatter about Americans would be enough for him here, within the walls of the university. But no, it didn’t work out that way.
And I had to tell him that he didn’t know.
Here they tell him that the first to support the Fuhrer were not workers or peasants, but the All-German Trade Union of Associate Professors. "And why? Yes, only because Hitler promised to raise the salaries of assistant professors three times. And here’s a question for you: how much will you increase our salaries so that we unanimously vote for you?”
Here our candidate for governor sat down in a big muddy puddle. It is impossible to name a number less than “3”, he realized this. “3” is also a forbidden number, and it’s clear why. But he also could not name a large figure; he did not have such powers from the party.
And he turned out like this: “We are all to blame for the collapse of the Union and we will work to recreate it. And now I have to go, they’re still waiting for me at the factory!” And he went to the exit.
Oh, how the students stamped their feet and whistled! “He didn't answer the question! He avoided a direct answer! A shame!"
In general, they completely washed him away at that university, and he never looked there again.
And then smart people looked at those photographs of him, which his associates used to cover the entrances and fences in the city, and saw that if they added a brush to his bangs and mustache, he would look... very similar to Hitler. And they hired a whole bunch of pet people, gave them cola and bananas, a portrait with a mustache and bangs, and a big fat felt-tip pen. And the bus drove around the city and everywhere where there were photos of the candidate for governor, they painted on his bangs and mustache according to the model. And at the bottom they wrote: “If you vote for a communist, buy food for the last time!”
Of course, Ilyukhin was immediately informed about this disgrace, and he informed the police, and they began to chase the bus, and in the end they “caught” him. And there are the guys with Coke... “They gave us money and bananas... and told us to paint on them. Who? But we don’t know... Someone...” And the driver didn’t know anything at all, he was given a map of stops, and that’s it. “I didn’t even know why I should stop!”
But the most masterpiece example of “black PR” (and it comes in all colors!) was the substitution of the content of the Ilyukhin election newspaper.
The fact is that in this very Ensk, one local newspaper of a democratic bent, which had previously quarreled with the local governor, went over to Ilyukhin’s side. They were warned that “you will be received badly here, and you will be looked at badly there,” that is, what could happen to them could happen to D’Artagnan if he accepted Richelieu’s offer. But... the “guys” from the newspaper did not listen.
And so in the evening they submitted their newspaper to print, which depicts their new idol in bright colors, in the morning they sit, drink tea, and then Ilyukhin enters their editorial office and throws a newspaper on the table, their own newspaper, only the content in it is completely different!
Instead of good photographs of Ilyukhin, they are “terrible”; in an interview with him, instead of one thing, something completely different is written. In the original: “In life I am a fighter,” and here... “In life I am...!”, and so is the whole newspaper. The police were called, but the newspapermen say that they are not guilty of anything. And the printers say the same thing - what they gave us, we printed, but we don’t know who paid for the circulation, which has increased many times over. The money came through the bank!
It turns out that after 19:00, when the floppy disk with the newspaper went to the printing house, someone replaced it, and in a very short time experienced journalists were found who imitated the style of the newspaper’s authors. They also changed all the headlines, in a word, completely changed the newspaper, and then sent the floppy disk to print in the same layout as before, and managed to do all this before two o’clock in the morning. That is, a team of very high-level professionals worked.
Ilyukhin filed a lawsuit against the newspaper, but what's the point? He was never elected governor...
To be continued ...
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