Chapter 2
Protection against attacks Black PR.
In fact, to defend against such attacks is more difficult than to attack itself. In world practice, there are many cases where brilliant politicians and companies only due to the inability to fight off an information attack, organized by their political opponents, just crashed their own reputation. Sometimes erroneous protection built in that way, so that instead of neutralizing the enemys attack, it is increasing it. These errors occur as a consequence of not understanding the nature of information attacks. PR-attack fundamentally different from the war, where even a small force is still damaging. A large army which goes straight to the enemy could easily defeat him. It is not like this. Walking straight and answering rebuttals can bring you to a position of a loser.
At the same time, you can successfully fight off an attack, if you act right, using complex workarounds. Moreover, by using a porper methods you can beat off the attacks, even when the consequences of their impact are very significant.
Before you deal with the attacks of your competitors, it is important to understand the essence of the attacks, and to understand the types of them.
There are 4 basic types of information attacks:
.Professional information attack.
· Nonprofessional attack.
· Spontaneous attack.
· Spontaneous attack, supported by stakeholders.
Professional attack is always used by professional PR-managers, or even the whole PR-agency. It is built according to the main and the most effective rules of black PR and the effective use of all available resources. To fight back such an attack is very difficult and often nearly impossible. Very often the real person who made an attack is hidden and everything looks like an actions of some other organizations.
Unprofessional attack usually begins with the fact that one of your competitors has decided to use an information attack practices and started to do it by himself. Often, in this case, there are custom-made ordered articles or registered telecast. Content is usually is not much important and in you canproperly see that this is the custom paper (ordered). Typically, these attacks are not safe and can inflict heavy damage. You better ignore them and do not respond. Sometimes to fight them does not make any sense, and what is most common, to publish a rebuttal is a ig mistake, because denial can strengthen the attack and will make it proven.
Spontaneous attack is when your business is affected by someones interests. Construction company could face the interests of residents who stay in near lying areas. Oil company, faced with the interests of inhabitants of nearby towns. You can also hurt the interests of the diplomatic missions, national communities, etc. Touching someones interests should expect a response and you have to be to prepared for it.
Often spontaneous attack supported by interested in it publics. This can be soething, like public organizations interested in the contributions and popularity among the people. It can be political institutions and individual politicians, as well as just your competitors. It should also be noted that dissatisfied people are actively complaining to all authorities and somewhere there may be and even your personal enemies. By getting support this event can be very dangerous and can grow up into a strong professional black PR.
A classic example of this type of attack is the PR-sealing buildings in St. Petersburg (city in Russia)
Residents of different areas found out that parks and gardens under their windows are cut down and skyscrapers are build up instead of them. Basically, their outrage was limited by small letters to the court and, of course, it has never had any success. However, this case was noticed by the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg and members of municipal councils. They realized the big political gain and began to speculate on this, while helping (but not always) people to save their parks and gardens. That is in the harvest campaign 20032004, some deputies gained popularity only because of this. They held rallies, pickets and helped people with writing complaining letters, and delivered them to the urban governance. As a result, building companies have lost their fields. What is more interesting, many of these homes are fully consistent with all the rules, but the deputies, however, played with standards of illumination.That it was not constructed properly. And really, which citizen would agree that his house will be lighten by sun only in the evening and then only for three hours?
How did building companies of the city act in this situation? Most of them have tried to solve the problem with money. Thay tried to «buy district administration, municipal deputies, members of Legislative Assembly, the residents themselves, the chairpersons of housing cooperatives. So, basically, they tried to fight Black PR off with money. There have also been trying some several attempts to make an actions in support of «sealing buildings,» but basically everything was decided by money. It should be noted that at some points they were able to achieve some results through «buying, but not everything. This situation reduced the popularity of Vladimir Yakovlev, who was the governor of St. Petersburg that time. Also, they invented a new authority in approving the project, using the «public hearing. It is when, the builders were obliged to ask the opinion of the inhabitants ofor a future building site. And people can be against building on the very biased reasons. For example, some of the residents might just not like the fact that they are building a new home, where him and his children will not be able to buy an apartment. This form of public hearings in fact became a new form of getting money from builders. There also was invented a method with «red» people, who has been hired to act as a citizen and who needed to agree with a building a site.So the builders are spending more on it, and the apartments becoming more expensive.
At the same time, this problem can be avoided before it occurs, and even after the formation of all the problems can be solved with much less money.
Professional information attacks
Let us examine each of these types of attacks consistently. At first lets look how to protect against professional attacks. Of course, the professional attack is very destructive, and people who are not having a special training can not fight back. Many people think: «I have everything under control. The authorities are my friends. The press, too. No one else will want to fight with me. However, this is an overconfidence. Even in a completely totalitarian state, with the thoroughly controlled press, you can successfully make black PR against the people of authority. And it is not always necessary to use the press, because there is an alternative information media as well. Sometimes it is enough to write something on the fence or drop a letter in a single inbox. As long as people do not sit in separate cells and interact with each other always possible to come up with a new way to share information. There is an interesting case. The large number of political prisoners were put in, but in different cells. One of them had a red shirt, he was pulling out the threads from it, and then catching the flies and putting that threads to them. Very soon the flies were flying with red threads, and the whole prison sang song «International» (a Russian national songof communist parties). Even in cells it was possible for human to disseminate the information.