Doing Good and telling the Truth
Thursday I was at the Blogger Meeting in Berlin organized by Six Apart Germany. We had lots of different discussions and it was a wonderful event. I met some great people, both some I never met in real life and some that I always enjoy getting together with. It really was a very short term decision to go there with Ingmar and boy was it worth it. But wait, I did actually have a real reason for writing this. We talked about Treonauts and how the person doing it has a huge following and whether this is due to the fact that he can be very open and honest in his conversations. He says something sucks if it does. This brought me in to comment about the future that organizations have to deal with, with the Jamba or Kryptonite problems in mind. The thing is, in my mind, that it will no longer be enough to not do evil, you need to do the right stuff and tell the truth. Jamba can’t really get out of the bad vibe from bloggers because everything (or most everything) that was said was true. What can they say? That they way they advertise one ring tone and sell a subscription isn’t a great business model? Peleeaaaase :) The business model is very good, and they do say, in very small writing, that it’s a subscription. They might even say that in the voice over, but it’s still too hidden. The Kryptonite lock was breakable, there was nothing they could say. Except, … the truth. That would have been easy for Kryptonite but very hard for Jamba.
Times are changing, if you are a big company and you do something wrong it will get out. On top of that from truth builds trust and trust is a wonderful thing to have in a brand. We are, like Cluetrain said re-connecting due to the internet, finding a new town square to talk at and we are connecting to voices, to people we trust. Treonauts is an example here. He can talk openly and honestly and we buy into that. He will say that this and that feature sucks. Why can’t Palm say that? The thing is that they are doing their marketing, doing their work on getting a positive message out. That is good! Don’t get me wrong. But if some feature sucks, then they will have to talk about it, honestly, saying that they screwed up, or that based on the market research they did previously, they saw this as a feature. It’s about honesty. Nokia’s Lifeblog isn’t available on the Nokia 6600 because of design choices in the OS layer. It’s their choice, I can complain of course, but I can also accept it because it is their choice. Honesty helps.
Why am I writing all this now? Because I am not alone! I just found a ChangeThis manifesto by Simon Kind and Piers Fawkes entitledIs the Truth the Next Big Truth? . HA! Read that one too now and you will slowly see the power of the changes that are upon us. It will be really challenging and remember that truth is a binary thing.