It's called Transparency...look into it.

A friend shared a post from the guys over at BlueLine that I just loved. It starts out with -

Sometimes, it seems, getting people to see the beauty in putting their marketing dollars toward finding their clients and creating a dialogue with them is a little like getting an alcoholic to switch to Kool Aid; they know it would be better for them, cost them less in the long run and they would not run the risk of saying something they didn’t intend and inadvertently turn everyone in the room off…

Like kicking the bottle, switching from talking to your customers to talking with them takes vision and something to replace the old habit with.

I totally agree. However, there is danger lurking when the folks at the helm have merely caught on to a few buzz words like "Community" and "User Generated Content". They have no real clue about what Transparency really means and they go about the business of trying to build a "community experience" because it's cool and it will for sure make them a lot of money. What's truly sad is that they don't realize that the community that they're trying to reach is going to smell the cheesy, and dare I say sleazy, ploy from a mile away.

It's not just about marketing spend. It's about embracing the notion of transparency within the corporate walls first. If the culture within the company isn't transparent and open communication is either non-existent or stifled, then the marketing department is going to be hard pressed to create that environment of trust outside those corporate walls.

There are a few quotes from the Cluetrain Manifesto that are among my favorites:

Paranoia kills conversation. That's its point. But lack of open conversation kills companies.

Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.

To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their community. But first, they must belong to a community.

If the company tries to take the leap of joining the community within the market place without first having a healthy and well-developed sense of transparency and openness inside the business, then their efforts are most certainly going to blow up in their collective faces.

Inside the company:

Transparency builds trust; trust builds interest; and interest builds a commited workforce who is truly invested in seeing a vision through to fruition.

Outside the company:

Transparency builds trust; trust builds interest; and interest builds an audience who is willing to share their ideas and and engage in a relationship with the company selling to them.

It's called Transparency...look into it.