There is a big dispute over the PR community whether or not, the Black PR strategies are entirely based on lies and deception. Well, the truth is that no one can estimate for sure how many of them are actually made of false statements and imaginative facts, but there is a huge difference between professionally made smear campaigns and those which happen to have completely incidental outcomes. In fact, when referring to common defamation techniques I can clearly distinct a contrast between professional terms such as libel, slander and black public relations, although their basic meaning remains pretty much the same - crushing someone’s reputation.
The main objectives of BPR tactics are to find the dirty secrets of the target and turn them against it in a profound communication campaign. This is actually composed of the two key stages of any smear strategy, starting with an extensive information gathering and an internal corporate investigation. The approaches that could be used here vary both ethically and skillfully and depends mainly on the type of a target you are aiming at. This means that if someone needs to do a Black PR, s/he can always choose whether or not to stick on the right side of the law. For example if you are really good at any kind of research or competitive intelligence, there is nothing wrong of widely exposing the unpleasant truth about your target, especially when this is in a common public interest. But, if you maliciously crack into the corporate networks of the victim or perform a little social engineering, the story seems totally different . Keep also in mind that once you get access to the internal systems of a company , you can do almost anything that comes in mind - including deleting important data, transforming digits and text or even mess with the control of critical operations.
The other stage of Black PR comes when the collected information is being used after as a part of a detailed strategical planning. The idea behind this is simple - to project a negative image of the target, by using the gathered date and experience. Actually the rules of building and harming a reputation are very similar and once you know how to protect one, it is very easy to master its destruction. Whichever way you choose to pitch your messages, by using your own media contacts or having time to think about safer communication channels, make sure that your are not lying to the audience, by giving the correct facts and enough reliable sources.
Black PR has many other dimensions and tools of cracking personal/corporate reputations. For example, instead of a dirt hunting, many professionals now-a-days are focused on finding multiple ways to challenge the relationship between the company, the target, and its stakeholders, employees, investors, suppliers and so on. This is a very vast topic, so I promise to concentrate on this some other time.
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