transparency and post-transparency.

Talking with Angus recently has led me to think a fair amount on transparency and the importance of it to creating a connection with consumers. This led to, last night at a Starbucks, me scribbling rapidly about the possible clash of branding and transparency in terms of making meaning. To put it bluntly, the chances of anyone or anything being both radically open, and creating and staying on an iconic message, are negligible (assuming that the message isn't mostly one of transparency and 'human-ness'). What this led me to thinking about was an idea of post transparency thinking, and the mixing of a curated message with a more natural one.

It is a both a good thing, and a bad thing, that I read a disgusting amount of magazines. Good because I managed to read the article that exposed me to the core of these ideas, and bad because it took 45 minutes of searching to remember that it had been in GOOD, and not Wired, or Monocle, or Maisonneuve (all of which I recommend wholeheartedly).

"Green is the Colour of Money", an article on corporate greenwashing, makes mention of the Clif Bar company, and one interesting facet of it's operations. The entire delivery fleet runs on biodiesel, and the company has 'a very strong sustainability program'. It also doesn't advertise this at all, except to mention on the packaging that the bars are about 70% organic in ingredients. This is interesting, and I think it goes beyond the fact that the company doesn't advertise, as far as I can tell.

This could be seen as a simple choice that the company live or die on the merits of the product, which is something easy to respect. But it is also a powerful choice given the nature of information access, at the current moment in time. While the article later mentions that the wrappers are not recyclable, this doesn't come across as much of a criticism, although it would if the company was pushing a strong 'green' image. However, it's 2007, and Google exists. Articles like this one being written, consumers blogging and posting on message boards, information like this gets out there, and people search for it. If transparency is about making it simple for consumers to see what you are doing, and therefore assume that you aren't hiding anything, than this is post-transparency; operating on the assumption that the consumer can find out what you do, and instead of simply not addressing your failings, utilise the power of not addressing your successes.

The end result is that you are lauded all the more for enviable facets to your business, and forgiven for little flaws like Clif Bar's non-recyclable wrapper, because, well, it's not like you were bragging about it. Moreover, if people have to look for information (and you can assume they will, if they care) they are at least somewhat more likely to assume it is true than if they are getting it spoonfed to them by the corporation in question.

By understanding that the information, if it exists, will be available, the only question becomes how to generate the interest necessary to turn a post-transparency approach into goodwill, good press, and hopefully good sales. The obvious choice here is to create a superior product, or at the very least one that speaks for itself. Most of us have already reached the point of understanding the brand is more important than any individual offering. Telling people they should love and respect the brand is the first step towards backlash. Letting them find out why themselves, after they have decided to love the product, seems like a fast route to overwhelmingly positive word of mouth, beyond the fact that it offers you a little forgiveness for any initiatives or approaches that aren't 100% of what the consumer might expect.

The other option that seems of the same school, is the ever-present-in-the-back-of-my-mind artificialism, which I should really get around to explaining clearly. I will, whenever I figure out a clear way to explain it. For a quick, cryptic attempt: artificialism is the point when a demand for transparency meets an adherence to branding. Constructing an entire system of information in the goal of creating a singular perception, divorced at least somewhat from reality. However, I'm currently of the mind this would only work on a personal level, as something that requires near-perfection in execution is rarely something that would scale.