“Transparency” Will Not Always Be Pretty
A client sent me this deep thought (which I’ve edited for content & length):
“Integrated marketing was valid when you had limited vehicles for interaction but it dies in the internet world. Nowadays to be effective, you need to deliver messages that not only aligns with customers’ needs, aspirations, and desires, but also aligns with the media they’re consuming.
Therefore displaying ‘multiple personalities’ in outbound communications is not a bad thing – as integrated, command-and-control marketing would dictate – but is actually a necessary function of the dawning age.
Social media when used correctly enables companies to display different facets of their corporate personality – thereby enabling consumers to get a complete picture of the company – just like a person.”
Hard to argue with that. But, it got me to thinking. What if we took this personal publishing paradigm to the nth degree? What if every corporation allowed any employee to blog away, showing the “different facets of the company’s personality?”
That may or may not qualify as “social media, used correctly” (as described by my client, above), but, most evangelists would probably argue that such freedom is going to be a good thing.
However, without rules, consider what might have happened to JetBlue last week…
How might last month’s flap have gone over if the many JetBlue employees involved in the mess had been blogging away, throughout the kafuffle?
JetBlue’s CEO noted that scores of flight attendants were stranded in their hotel rooms during the crisis, with no way to get in touch with the company. …What if the flight attendants had blogged about their frustrations, from their hotel rooms? Would that have motivated faster, more effective change or communication? Maybe!
What if a JetBlue pilot had vlogged from a stranded plane on the runway, pointing her camera-phone back into the inside of a stuffy, dark, angst-filled cabin? …Would the resulting outrage and shame have gotten those poor passengers back to the terminals faster? Probably!
But would the sum total have been better or worse for JetBlue?
On the one hand, I think that more transparency of this nature would have shortened the duration of the actual crisis. However, overall, my bet is that JetBlue’s reputation would have fared far worse. Fairly or not, the damage caused by this level of openness might have been irreparable. And let’s not forget that that employee-generated content would be cached online forever.
While serving as a co-panelist at a PRSA event with the esteemed Paul Gillin, he noted that Microsoft’s Employee Blogging Policy consists of two words: “Be Smart.” I kinda like that: I think it would be enough to keep most employees from posting competitive info, for example. But such a broad policy is also wide open to interpretation: it could well be that the vlogging pilot I dreamt-up above would find it “smart” to post video clips of panicky passengers, to hasten a change in the corporate parent’s policy. That doesn’t make it “smart” from a long-term reputation standpoint, though.
Ultimately the rise of employee bloggers is inexorable and – per my client’s deep thoughts – it’s a movement that should be embraced. But corporate marketers must fashion blogging policies with their eyes wide open. Every touchpoint is a potential landmine.
A “complete picture” is not always a “pretty picture.”
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Thanks so much for this thought-provoking post.
Seems to me that what we as communicators have to do is prepare our organizations for this un-pretty picture before it threatens to raise its ugly head.
A tall challenge, but one that’s necessary to address.
Probably a better (though less polite) simple policy would be “Don’t be stupid.”
Yes, this is tongue-in-cheek, but only just…
Todd:
One of my big pet peeves is the idea that every company operates like or has the culture of a tech firm.
In other words, what works for Microsoft would not work for a non-profit hospital, or a retail establishmment like Home Depot, or an oil company.
Microsoft can tell people to “Be Smart” and a workforce of smart people can understand what that means and how to act.
But not every workforce is that savvy. I would hate to think what would happen if most companies opened up the floodgates and started letting everyone tell stories about their day.
In that regard, I’m with you 100 percent about JetBlue. An open approach featuring all employes might have been the end.
Your scenario about employees creating permanent new media records is a chilling reminder of the limitations of openness. Perhaps if every company was expected to practice new media transparency, then those that didn’t would be competitively disadvantaged. In that scenario, your jetBlue example would be less chilling as companies outdid themselves to be the most open. I suppose that will happen as soon as we have more leg room in coach and meals are served once again on china.