{"id":216,"date":"2011-06-06T09:02:53","date_gmt":"2011-06-06T16:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gordonbenzie.com\/blog\/?p=216"},"modified":"2023-06-24T12:34:34","modified_gmt":"2023-06-24T19:34:34","slug":"the-age-of-communications-transparency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gordonbenzie.com\/blog\/the-age-of-communications-transparency\/","title":{"rendered":"The Age of Communications Transparency"},"content":{"rendered":"

Often the true impacts of technology innovations are not immediately recognized or understood. It took decades for the discovery of electricity to widely impact how we live in a world where electricity and light is readily available. The Internet is no different. Still in its infancy, new social behaviors have already been embraced and adopted, including how job searches are conducted, travel arrangements are booked and social networking through sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook.<\/p>\n

Another not so obvious change involves the ownership and privacy of information, specifically our own identities and reputation. Today it is much harder to have privacy or lead a \u201csecret\u201d life. A recent example is the congressman Anthony Weiner twitter scandal. Another is the photo showing Michael Phelps <\/a>taking a bong hit nearly three months after he wrapped up a record haul of eight gold medals in Beijing. The list goes on and on. Today\u2019s social media venues coupled with smart phones that all now include cameras have made privacy more difficult to maintain.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Marketing communications transparency is a smart choice in today’s world that lacks privacy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This lack of expected privacy has a big repercussion for marketing communications, business plan writers and investor prospectus authors, among others. In just the same way that the truth has a way of getting out to the public, unsubstantiated or exaggerated marketing claims will most likely be discovered or revealed. Today it is critical to communicate with complete transparency. Spokespersons for companies and their products must be genuine. Product claims must be documented and proven.<\/p>\n

Third party recommendations have always been important to drive sales. The challenge, however, is that it used to take a bit of effort to find someone who has just purchased the product or service you were contemplating. Often the effort didn\u2019t justify the work, so purchases were not necessarily \u201cqualified\u201d by a third party reference.<\/p>\n

Today, a referral is as easy to find as going to Yelp or launching one of the many different smart phone applications with an interactive \u201crate this\u201d or \u201ccomment on this\u201d feature. Buyers don\u2019t expect every review to be perfect \u2026 in fact, they might suspect a lack of transparency if every review is perfect. They want to see who had what issues, to then make their decision accordingly to pursue the purchase, or not. The point is that there is now a very efficient, active venue for voicing concern or issues with a product … a “horror” story could take on a life of its own and spread like wildfire.<\/p>\n

There is still a role for preparing corporate collateral, but its role should not be to try and \u201csell\u201d the product, but rather, provide details that a company can prepare best, such as specifications, product performance as well as documentation on what can be realistically achieved.<\/p>\n

But, it better be accurate and current, as a fair representation of your product\u2019s capabilities. If not, it is now a reasonable expectation that you will be found out, and you will pay the price with a loss of brand integrity for not practicing transparency in your marketing communications.<\/p>\n

Gordon Benzie<\/strong> is a marketing adviser\u00a0and business plan writer that specializes in preparing and executing upon business plans and marketing strategies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Often the true impacts of technology innovations are not immediately recognized or understood. It took decades for the discovery of electricity to widely impact how we live in a world where electricity and light is readily available. The Internet is no different. Still in its infancy, new social behaviors have already been embraced and adopted, … Continue reading The Age of Communications Transparency<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,13,4,18,1],"tags":[65],"class_list":["post-216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brand-integrity","category-business-plan-writer","category-marketing-communications","category-social-media","category-uncategorized","tag-marketing-communications"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Age of Communications Transparency - Making Every Word Count<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gordonbenzie.com\/blog\/the-age-of-communications-transparency\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Age of Communications Transparency - Making Every Word Count\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Often the true impacts of technology innovations are not immediately recognized or understood. 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