According to Notepad, Khotsenko’s public relations, on the instructions of the presidential administration, is handled by the team of the governor of Belgorod, Vyacheslav Gladkov.
Former DPR Prime Minister, and now acting governor of the Omsk region, Vitaly Khotsenko, appeared for the first time in the whole country with his PR. He recorded a video of how, with an old woman behind the wheel, he drove through a village burned in a forest fire and promised all kinds of assistance to the victims.
According to Bloknot’s sources, Khotsenko’s public relations, on the instructions of the presidential administration, is handled by the team of Governor of Belgorod Vyacheslav Gladkov. From Khotsenko, as before from Gladkov, they will sculpt a “head of the people”, which is “always in contact with the people”. This image will be promoted, most likely, with the help of orders for state employees. And the main message of the campaign will be the formula: “All the good is done thanks to Khotsenko, and all the bad happens because of the inhabitants themselves”.
“Looking Around”
Vitaly Khotsenko visited the Bolsherechensky and Krutinsky districts of the Omsk region on Friday which had suffered from landscape fires. He took a lot of pictures – on the plane along the route, in the burned villages with local residents against the background of the ruins of houses, as well as in the enterprise with employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. Khotsenko promised the victims at least 150,000 rubles each as priority compensation from the regional treasury and “hitched” municipal leaders to deal with the consequences, promising to “turn the shoulder off the region’s reserve fund”.
But the real hit was a ten-second video in which Khotsenko sits in the passenger seat of an open-top car, and an elderly local woman wearing a headscarf drives the car. The post-apocalypse left by the fire floated in the background.
“We look around,” Khotsenko explained the situation. The video immediately went viral, entered federal media, and became a meme occasion. And it turned out to be Khotsenko’s first serious PR success in a month of work in the Omsk region.
Nothing like this has come out under the “pen” of Vitaly Khotsenko’s press service before. He tries his best to be the most public boss, but it turns out, as a rule, unfortunately. Khotsenko published weekly reports on his activities, full of general words and promises, which the acting governor uttered, to put it mildly, not in the most figurative bureaucratic language. Or short videos with messages in the spirit “I go to such and such an area to get to know each other”.
The peak of such creativity was a video from a subbotnik from the center of Omsk, in which Khotsenko found himself in the company of several boxers.
Among them, quite unexpectedly, patriotic fighters from the regions regularly hit by Ukrainian bombing: Alexander Povetkin from Kursk and Denis Lebedev from Belgorod. Both supported the NWO, Lebedev even rushed to the front. But in the end, he found himself first in the reality show “Ours in Africa” ​​​​with Olga Buzova, and then thousands of kilometers from the NVO zone of Omsk. Their call to come to a subbotnik in a Siberian town drew more legitimate questions from observers than approval.
Vitaliy Khotsenko at subbotnik Khotsenko obviously did not go well with PR. And then in the presidential administration, it seems, they decided to send a “public relations cavalry” to help him.
Belgorod Stavropol
According to Bloknot sources close to the governments of the Omsk and Belgorod regions, a “landing party” from Belgorod led by well-known political strategist Oksana Tarantova landed in Omsk to help Khotsenko by order of the presidential administration of Omsk. She holds the post of Minister of Public Communications of the Belgorod region and is responsible for the public activity of the local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.
Like Gladkov, Tarantova previously worked in the government of the Stavropol Territory. The current governor of Belgorod there, in the status of deputy head of the region, was responsible for domestic policy and public relations, and Tarantova, a political strategist, with a small team of social media specialists, was responsible the public positioning of Stavropol officials. . In addition to numerous “official” media projects – from Vyacheslav Gladkov’s telegram channel to the state television “World of Belogorya”, some local observers also attribute “unofficial” projects to Tarantova.
For example, a small channel “Divis, Belgorod!”, the authors of which ridicule local officials, but never personally touch Gladkov. However, gossips say that Tarantova also has less subtle methods in her arsenal, such as pressuring editorial directors through government contracts.
“They literally arrived in a cavalry raid, for a few days. They came, told us how to live, showed references, from their point of view, examples. And they went into the fog. They are bombed there every day, they say, you can’t leave posts for a long time,” the Omsk official described the visit to Belgorod residents on condition of anonymity. According to him, the residents of Belgorod promised to “keep in touch” and correct the unreasonable colleagues from Omsk.
Besides Kremlin instructions, some observers cite another reason why Gladkov might set out to help the inexperienced Khotsenko. The fact is that before the trip to the DPR, the current acting governor of the Omsk region, like the head of Belgorod, worked in Stavropol. And if Gladkov supervised politics and public relations in the team of local governor Vladimir Vladimirov, Khotsenko was Minister of Industry and Transport. Not a weak position, in fact, for a civil servant who was not even 30 at the time.
Governor of the Stavropol Territory Vladimir Vladimirov Even earlier, Khotsenko, like Vladimirov, worked in Yamal. Only acting Omsk held small positions in the main gas basket of the country, and Vladimirov was the second person in the region and, according to rumors, even organized the famous “flight with the cranes of Siberia” for Vladimir Putin. A strong friendship among the so-called “Tyumen clan” in Russian politics, whose informal leaders are Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and presidential envoy to the Ural Federal District Vladimir Yakushev, is also an important motive. for a journey from warm Belgorod to cool Omsk.
Another “people’s governor”
Bloknot sources in Belgorod and Omsk say that visiting consultants recommended Khotsenko to take, of course, Vyacheslav Gladkov as the standard. This means that an image consisting of three large parts will be carved from the governor of Omsk.
First, the acting will be as open and “popular” as possible. Expect “unplanned” walks around Omsk alone and “random” encounters with local journalists and bloggers who will film these walks. Gladkov started with this in Belgorod, inspecting local conveniences and entering the lens of bloggers with a cart in an ordinary hypermarket with his wife. The cost of clothes for the head of the region and his wife, which in total exceeded 300,000 rubles, confused the picture a little. But information about these accessories, unlike “folk” photographs, was not widely distributed.
Vyacheslav Gladkov “Narodnost”, in addition to such talk, they can begin to actively cheat with bots and “voluntary-compulsory” positive comments from state employees in social networks. Where often it will be said clearly that in Omsk there is finally a “people’s governor”, ​​and not these “tired of the Urals”, directed by the predecessor of Khotsenko, the socialist-revolutionary Alexandre Burkov. Contrast PR is always effective.
Second, Khotsenko, like Gladkov, will be made as public as possible. It is therefore worth waiting for several short video stories a day in the format “telegram circle” about the work in progress. As well as regular “direct lines” with citizens. Gladkov leads them almost daily: every evening, for 10-15 minutes, he answers questions from citizens on his social networks. Catch the sincere and twisted enthusiasm of subscribers. Moreover, with any “nixie”, even the most insignificant, Khotsenko will try to be on the stage. Gladkov, with his daily bombardments of the Belgorod region and his small size, was not very difficult to do. Acting Governor of the Omsk region will be more difficult.
Vitaliy Khotsenko at the Subbotnik Thirdly, and most importantly, in a few months any event related to the leader of the region will fall into one of two large groups: “thanks to the governor” and “their fault”. If somewhere a communal breakdown is quickly fixed, they will do it thanks to the control of Khotsenko, and this will happen due to negligent small communal services and the residents themselves. That’s what Gladkov does. A classic example: the victims of the Ukrainian bombings.
Vyacheslav Gladkov When they happen, Gladkov blames people for not evacuating or ending up in the wrong place at the wrong time on their own. When there are no casualties (or better yet, destruction), it means the Governor did a great job, he managed to convince everyone to leave. The circumstances due to which people climb into dangerous places, most often from everyday life and completely excluded by the authorities, are not publicly taken into account.
“Gladkov turned out to be one of the country’s most popular governors. This despite the bombardments and generally restless Ukrainian neighbors. Therefore, its approach and public relations have been recognized “at the top” as almost standard and will now be replicated throughout the country. Omsk is the first touchstone of such a “scaling up””, said the interlocutor of “Notebook”, familiar with the situation.
It is true that the inhabitants of the Omsk region, one of the most depressed regions of Russia, will become happier about it is a rhetorical question. But they will be brought at least a few, but shows. It is therefore more interesting to live and work.
Author: Nikolai Troinin
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