A little while ago, I heard an ad over the radio – the ceramic tiles discounts were combines with a question, “And what do you think, why Kim Kardashian came to Armenia?”
Yeah, well, what? She just came to buy ceramic tiles at a discount.
Advertising and marketing professionals, however, are not particularly to be blamed, the “Kim-mania” in Armenia as described by the Guardian, in these days, has reached the point that it would be a sin not to try taking advantage of it.
But over the past days, particularly, there were quite ironic comments on our Facebook page with regard to the coverage on her visit, approximately in the following spirit that “all of the people, the government together with the opposition have left all the concerns behind, the dollar exchange rate, etc. and are focused on Kardashian”, “insatiable nation, they are impressed in these few days,” “You indeed made us sick, enough,” and the material in “A-1 +” entitled “Kim came out of the restaurant’s back door”, which we reprinted in our website, a user by the name Marina Hayuhi responded as follows: “And have you fixed the hours of her going to the toilet?”
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What can I say … We were still restrained in covering this visit than the international media that were even discussing whether, let’s say, it was appropriate to visit the Genocide Memorial wearing a sexy red dress, or Kim was wandering around the dirty streets of the city of Gyumri wearing shoes worth of 625 dollars.
Pay attention – the above-mentioned citations are not only from the glamorous publications covering the life of the celebrities. In the past few days, this visit was referred by such prestigious media outlets as the New York daily news, Washington post, Reuters, Usatoday … you cannot list all of them.
Thanks to this visit, even our Republican grandmother appeared in the pages of the international press. Today, Dailymail affixed that an elderly woman waited for three days to give flowers to Kim.
“We all know that Kim is no angel but the people of Armenia are flocking round her like she has descended from heaven,” – writes the Mirror online.
The American prestigious “Nielsen” marketing company has calculated that the Kardashians PR campaign in Armenia for only two days amounts to 36,507,929 dollars. This is really one of the most successful campaigns.
Anyway, let’s go back to our unhappy readers and inform that “Aravot” had not sent a journalist to the airport to meet the Kardashians. Perhaps, we were wrong. But, only a few articles on their visit have appeared on our main newsfeed as a preference by the editor. We had posted materials about the Armenian-ethnic world-famous soprano Maria Guleghina’s visit to Armenia, about the Italian violinist Francesca Dego’s visit, and eventually, the events going on around the “Founding Parliament”… But, alas, they did not have as many readers as a word said in the press conference about the Kardashians, a publication translated from the international press… And the members of the “Founding Parliament” have reasonable suspicion that the arrests were deliberately planned on the days of this visit, even though the criminal case was filed earlier so that the happening remains in the shade in the background of the Kardashians.
Almost all publications about the Kardashians were becoming the most-read material with a few thousand views. And it was so in all the mass media that were covering the Kardashians visit. This was the reader’s preference and naturally, there is no need to blame the media.
Anna ISRAELYAN
