PR specialist Haik Kirakosyan, in the conversation with Aravot.am, referring to the mess in one of the trade malls in Yerevan on February 20, which was preceded by the advertisement on buying electric equipment for 1000 drams, mentioned, “We do not have a circus in Armenia as such, and with the help of the National Assembly or such an event, an attempt is made to fill in this gap. But unfortunately, if in case of the National Assembly such a thing can be allowed, then in case of the poor and insolvent people wishing to buy goods at a cheaper price, this is not true. If you remember, during the opening of the church in Abovyan, we witness something like this of how people were taking food from the tables.
Photo from Armtimes.com
Also there was a time when people were saying that all the homeless people living in the tents around the Opera House on March 1 were coming to eat pizza, but no one was asking, I’m sorry, but why there are so many homeless people in this country that are coming to eat pizza, and whether the homeless is not a man who currently lives in such a social condition, he does not have the income to buy food, equipment or pizza. Collecting dividends and such rating by using levers on your own people is simply unacceptable. The more we were sad in Armenia, three times more our neighbors were happy seeing these videos. Their news channels definitely broadcast it as a description of our country.”
And whether the company was doing a PR on this, in this respect Haik Kirakosyan mentioned, “I am more than sure that it was doing a PR because their employee who was commenting was broadcast, the company logo was seen in the background and so on and so forth. We actually have a law on unscrupulous advertising, which is to regulate the law, protests and discounts. As far as I remember, one of electronic equipment stores were subjected to fines on several occasions as it had announced discounts but they were not applied. Now, in this case, people are fallen down, there were beatings, the goods were broken, and all of this, in my opinion, should be considered in the legal field too, what you have done that such a thing happened. However, they are not interested in it. It is not a protest against the government to take it under control and send a number of people as the number of protesters. In this case, the interests were different therefor it happened what happened. I must also say that this was not the best PR for the company, because there is an unwritten law in the PR – not to go against ethical rules.
To the point, when I saw the “Black Friday” in Yerevan, the first association was with the episode in Bulgakov’s “Master and Margarita” novel, when Woland organizes a show and distributes clothes for free, women are rising on the stage, leave their clothes out there, get a modern French clothing, accessories, and in the end, money is poured onto the head of the audience, but the next day, it turns out that the whole city was left without clothes, and the money was turned into pieces of a paper. Hence, nowadays, this question is still relevant – people are ready to “get undressed” for a TV that costs 1000 drams.”
Gohar HAKOBYAN
