Explosive PR. Secrets of Outrageous PR-Stunts from Russia with Love for Positive News. Igor Szucs
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inner state.
And this is real buzz or bliss-out worth experiencing at least once in a lifetime.
And like my friend and Nietzsche wannabe Anthony “The Inquisitor” Kirsanov would put it, whatever does not kill us can be tried once again!
Theoretical Framework of Explosive PR
Explosive PR did not originate out of nowhere. However, this is how it is now perceived by my numerous rivals. The number of explosive PR agencies keeps growing. Yet, there are only five real professionals in this trade: Anton Vuima, Oleg Voronin, Maksim Perlin, Misha Chernyshev, and Oleg Matveychev4, the guru of all gurus.
Explosive PR has a host of friends: newsjacking, guerilla marketing, viral video, flash mob, pranks, art actionism, cats, sexvertising, experience-marketing, shockvertising, mem-marketing, memjacking, ambush-marketing, hashtag jacking, and marketing shticks.
Works of fiction and cinematography, rather than related areas, that motivated me to tackle explosive PR. Here is the best theoretical framework for those who want to be fearless of explosive PR:
– Wag the Dog movie – a screen adaptation of Larry Beinhart’s American Hero,
– The Black Mirror series,
– The Absolute Power mini-series,
– Christopher Buckley’s Little Green Men,
– Ears That Wag the Ass, a book by Russian authors who are currently employed as Kremlin spin doctors
The authors of the above-listed works present PR as it should be: salient, creative, and stunning, but it is nothing like that. In agencies and corporations, PR comes down to press release mailing, press tours, and conferences. I was bored doing these kinds of things for 10 years, so I decided to return the original sense to PR: foolhardiness, recklessness, and flamboyancy. If these are present, PR is destined to be efficient.
“PR Needs More Balls!”
When I heard Fred Cook’s5 coined phrase “PR needs more balls’6, I knew I wasn’t the only one concerned with PR desalination.
“My outlook on the future of PR is simply that PR needs more balls and I translate balls to mean courage. As PR people, we are known for swimming in our swim lanes and playing nice in the sandbox,” he said. “But this is our opportunity to not play so nice in the sandbox.
We’re looking at whether the term PR is still the right term.
It needs a broader definition to include everything we do, and we have to do a lot to change minds and show what we’re capable of”7.
In this book I’ll tell you how:
– ideas launch new businesses,
– I come up with ideas,
– the info explosion or splash is achieved,
– you “seed” news,
– explosive promo actions are conducted,
I’ll also share cases from my portfolio.
Why I Wrote This Book And For Whom?
I console myself that I’m not the only madman in this world. I would like to meet other spin doctors like me. Why? So we can do something exciting together and know there is more positive, interesting, and hilarious news around us. The news is horrid – at least in this country.
Interesting invented news makes people smile, makes things fun, and allows us to marvel at the things around us.
And if business objectives are addressed against this background, like entering a new market or launching new products or mobile apps, then this is a win-win approach.
You’re welcome to enter the world of Explosive PR if you are:
– a spin doctor or marketing analyst prone to inventing news and willing to do something special in Russia for yourself or your clients,
– a startup entrepreneur interested in rising to fame,
– an experienced business person eager to jolt the market and recharge your batteries,
– a PR conference organizer eager to meet an interesting speaker and cases from Russia
Find my contacts at the end of this book.
Let’s plunge into the fascinating world of explosive PR and I’ll share everything I know.
Even if you use my technology independently, without my involvement, or refine it, I’ll be happy!
Make PR Great Again!
Ten Ways to Come Up With a Creative Idea For an Explosive Promo Event
I love the creative process. I do what I do out of pure enjoyment. Hopefully, nobody does it better. There’s a beauty to making a great deal. It’s my canvas. And I like painting it.8
Donald Trump
I’m a painter. Media is my canvas and ideas are my paints. Some works were done for a mass audience and some only for connoisseurs. To produce better work, you should continue painting, being creative, and implementing ideas.
A good idea means a more than halfway successful explosive PR campaign.
News must evoke the desire to print and reprint it, press a “like” button near it, and repost it. I’ll explain in this article how to make this type of news.
1. “Dictionary Divination.” This method was invented by a well-known PR man from St. Petersburg, Anton Vuima, the author of Black PR.
Here’s the gist of his method. You keep the business you’re promoting in your mind. You take a dictionary of the Russian language, open it to any page, and point your finger at a random word. Whatever it is, your task is to align it with your client and invent a promo action. The case study where a watch worth 200,000 euro was drowned in the Neva is described by Anton in the following video at the end of the third minute.9
How does this work? I don’t know, but it does. This is possibly the psyche or help from Heaven, I can’t tell you for sure. But it works like it worked for the detective from Twin Peaks. Do you remember him guessing suspects, setting up bottles, and flinging stones at them? When his guess was correct, a stone would break the glass. He didn’t know how it worked, but it did. Does it really matter how? Just use it.
2. Thinking in Paradoxes. Coming up with paradoxes means inventing centaurs, that is aligning two seemingly and fundamentally incompatible things – like a man with the body of a horse. As the saying goes, “When a dog bites a man, it’s not news, but when a man bites a dog – that’s a sensation.” Or a man went hunting with his dog and was attacked by… a dog. You’ll be laughing, but that was real news somewhere in Europe.
Think of someone for whom you’ll never be able to provide your services, or of the product you would not sell to anybody under no circumstances.
What client would make you laugh at his/her oddity? When you have the answers to these questions or remember something from your real life and smile, you are on the right path.
One
CEO of Golin, a global PR firm. Author of
About three-quarters of respondents said PR would become even more complex in the next five years and subsequently, only a quarter said this would make their jobs more fun. http://www.prweek.com/article/1417320/fred-cook-pr-needs-balls
Public speech at the Institute of Public Relations Research Symposium in New York.