REAL Transparency

A key to Social Media is transparency, a topic which I’ve blogged about on numerous occasions. In her book The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, Tamar Weinberg says:

Social Media marketing is all about disclosure, or transparency. If you educate your audience about your primary goals and core values, and let your constituents know what you are doing right and wrong in your company, you will have nothing to fear about social media.

We live in a culture where we fudge on transparency all the time. Take a walk down the magazine aisle of a book or grocery store. Look at the magazines aimed at women. You’ll see cover after cover of perfect, beautiful, thin women. Our culture tells our young girls that THIS is what they should look like. What they don’t tell us is that the models on the front have personal trainers, work out endlessly, and even then, the pictures are manipulated to hide any “imperfections.” In other words, these women aren’t really real.

This reminds me of something interesting that actress Jamie Lee Curtis did back in 2002. She was asked to pose for a photo-shoot for More Magazine. She agreed, but only if she ALSO got to show the world the “real” Jamie. First up is the end result of the original photo-shoot…courtesy of stylists and airbrushing:

She looks great, right? Well, I give Jamie credit, because she didn’t want people thinking she was really “perfect,” thereby by putting pressure on other women her age and younger. So here’s the photo of the REAL Jamie that she insisted also be included in the article:

It goes against conventional Hollywood and cultural wisdom, but it is rather refreshing, eh? You can read more about this in the article “True Thighs.”

Jamie Lee Curtis understands the importance of transparency. And I hope that we see more of this in business and culture.

I’ll leave you with another example of this…the Campaign for Real Beauty from Dove. This campaign began in 2004 and is aimed at building self esteem in the lives of our girls. I’ll let these two videos speak for themselves. First is Evolution followed by a commercial called True Colors.

What are your feelings on transparency? How are you exhibiting it in your business and marketing?

Tagged as: Dove, Jamie Lee Curtis, Marketing, Social Media, transparency, video