How Transparent Should a Business Be?

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

Gen­er­ally speak­ing, there are three types of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The first two are:

1. That which con­tains impor­tant content

2. That which is pre­sented in an engag­ing way

Most of the time, we seem to be on the receiv­ing end of 1 or 2 – which means either worthy-but-dull or entertaining-but-empty.

VENN COMMS

Occa­sion­ally, these two cir­cles over­lap in a Venn dia­gram of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and bingo! Num­ber 3 – some­thing worth­while meets time enjoy­ably spent.

Like sup­port­ers of a strug­gling foot­ball club, we attend con­fer­ences and meet­ings expect­ing #1 or #2, and hop­ing for the rare chance of #3. It’s like an away win for Lin­coln City – to be savoured and remem­bered for a long time to come.

That’s just what Mor­gan Spur­lock has achieved with his newly-posted TED talk.

TO PLUG OR NOT TO PLUG?

For those who don’t know, Spur­lock is the Super­size Me cam­paigner / doc­u­men­tary maker  who tried liv­ing on McDonald’s for 30 days. At face value, this TED video is just an indy film maker plug­ging his new project – and dup­ing peo­ple like me into help­ing him.

I sit, gullible as charged.

Alter­na­tively, it’s 20 min­utes of inspired brilliance,that works on so many lev­els, with lessons for any­one who’s in mar­ket­ing, in busi­ness, needs to com­mu­ni­cate, needs to take a risk, has a left-field idea or, indeed, has a pulse:

HOW TO ENGAGE

• it’s a MASTER CLASS  in pre­sent­ing. Talk, text, graph­ics, video, humour, audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion – an orches­tra of tech­niques all work­ing together, with Spur­lock as soloist and conductor.

• it’s BEAUTIFULLY STRUCTURED. After a brief cre­den­tials intro, he sets up a ques­tion, then only resolves it in the final minute. And while he plays out the other sub­plots in between, it’s the open­ing teaser that holds us in. And the pay-off… well, that would be telling.

HOW TO GIVE VALUE

• it’s CONTENT-RICH. Look – I don’t care if his ulti­mate motive is to plug his film. He does it by giv­ing me lots to think about. He doesn’t insult the viewer’s intel­li­gence; he flat­ters it.

• it’s SELF-CONTAINED  and valu­able in-and-of-itself. We don’t have to watch his film when it’s released; he’s giv­ing us the gist of the work in a short sem­i­nar. For free

HOW TO CHALLENGE

• it’s a CREATIVE DEMONSTRATION of his cen­tral premise: like the Masked Magi­cian show­ing us how tricks are done, Spur­lock also shows us how he pre­pared to show us. “This is how my movie got made – with or with­out the help of the cor­po­rate sorcerer’s and their apprentices.”

• it’s PARTICIPATIVE: unlike the Masked Magi­cian, he even­tu­ally enlists the help of some fel­low illu­sion­ists (his spon­sors) to help him pull the cur­tain back – and in doing so, they come out with full credit. It might not win them many friends in the rest of the Magic Cir­cle – espe­cially their mar­ket­ing agen­cies – but I bet it gen­er­ates huge cred­i­bil­ity with their cus­tomers (Might this be a Cor­po­rate Social Respon­si­bil­ity project in disguise?).

• it’s a CASE STUDY on the dif­fi­culty of gen­uinely think­ing ‘out­side of the box’. Cre­ative agen­cies can be as ham­strung by their exist­ing men­tal mod­els as the rest of us. Spur­lock offers them an oppor­tu­nity to be involved in some­thing dif­fer­ent – and they hide! After you’ve fin­ished laugh­ing, con­sider what client-and– self-imposed bound­aries kept them from tak­ing the risk

SAVVY IS, AS SAVVY DOES

And that’s the most impor­tant point – we might talk about bar­ri­ers com­ing down, social media blur­ring the divid­ing lines, new media pre­sent­ing new ways to engage… but much of what’s prac­ticed is still old wine in new bottles.

Here, I think Spur­lock – by acci­dent or design – is rewrit­ing the rules. While there’s no doubt that some of his tar­gets are there for ridicule ( 21st-century Wiz­ards of Oz), there is a chal­lenge in here which needs a business/marketing response:

As con­sumers grow increas­ingly savvy, is it bet­ter to be more trans­par­ent or more con­trol­ling? To show how the trick is done, or to find more sophis­ti­cated sleights of hand?

Or is the great­est play of all – to do both at the same time?

About Paul Rutherford

For over 25 years, Paul Ruther­ford has pur­sued two pas­sions; work­ing with col­leagues and Clients to solve busi­ness prob­lems, and help­ing oth­ers to develop them­selves, both pro­fes­sion­ally and personally.

Dis­cov­er­ing solu­tions to peo­ple problems

He served his appren­tice­ship in com­mu­ni­ca­tion agen­cies, cre­at­ing cam­paigns for Tech­nol­ogy and Busi­ness Ser­vice blue-chip corporations.

He moved Client-side in 1992, as Direc­tor of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions EMEA then Gen­eral Man­ager, Cor­po­rate Sales UK for Xerox, fol­lowed by VP Sys­tems Mar­ket­ing at IBM.

Paul was sub­se­quently Chief Mar­ket­ing Offi­cer for VC-backed Clear­swift, the global leader in email secu­rity, then GM and Coach to sev­eral tech­nol­ogy start-ups and turn-arounds.

Through­out his career, Paul has built and led teams – from two peo­ple in one office to 150 staff across 16 countries.

After five years as a main board direc­tor of EMEA Exec­u­tive Search firm Beau­mont Karl­son, Paul now runs Opti­men­tum, a bou­tique Coach­ing and Exec­u­tive Search practice.

Mar­ried to the most patient woman on the planet, Paul is father to three chil­dren who reg­u­larly remind him that there’s more to life than busi­ness and blogging.

That being said, Paul is always open to new con­ver­sa­tions; you can reach him via LinkedIn or directly at mail@paulrutherford.com

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Tags: Audience Participation, Campaigner, Comms, Documentary Maker, Face Value, Film Maker, Football Club, Indy Film, Lincoln City, Morgan Spurlock, Number 3, Rare Chance, Soloist, Subplots, Supersize, Text Graphics, Two Circles, Types Of Communication, Venn Diagram, Video Humour
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