The Truth Shall Set You Free

My Mom, a person of deep faith, on more than one occasion assured me while I was growing up that if I would only fess-up to my alleged youthful indiscretions, my life would improve. Seems my Mom and the Federal Trade Commission have the same instruction manual. In the first major change in endorsement rules in nearly 30 years, the FTC’s new transparency rules apply to bloggers and user generated content.

While there is some wailing and gnashing of teeth, the Commission’s rules for disclosing endorsements are really common sense and in keeping with the best practices of social networking. Transparency is at the heart of the new rules and bloggers and content creators who remember that will be fine.

Those who don’t may get to contribute $11,000 to the federal treasury.

If you’re a blogger or you create content for social media, all you have to do to comply is disclose you are being paid or provided with free product in exchange for your words or pictures. Most legitimate content creators do that now, but the FTC rule is a good reminder that transparency is the currency of the social media realm.

If, though, you’re rating products for hire, ghost tweeting or blogging for hire without revealing your sugar parent, then the new rules are trouble for you.

This is when my Mom would tell me that “be sure your sins will find you.” This time, though, it will be federal regulators who are watching.

P.S. – Mom, it’s possible I did relocate the neighbor’s fake pink flamingos from their yard in 1980. It’s been so long ago, I just don’t recall.

The End of the (Media) World

I love the movie Independence Day, the story of when an evil alien race arrives to the strains of REM’s “It’s the end of the world as we know it.”

There’s a new book that chronicles a different end of our media-driven world. No aliens this time, but the life altering changes in civilization are real.

AdAge editor Bob Garfield’s The Chaos Scenario looks at how the shift to a digital world spells doom for the symbiotic relationship between mass media and mass marketing. Garfield makes the case that the 400 year old practice of dictating to audiences is being replaced by consumer control that requires organizations to listen to people.

The core message – of which I am a true believer – can be found in this passage:
"(Consumers) aren't necessarily listening to you. They're listening to each other talk about you. And they're using your products, your brand names, your iconography, your slogans, your trademarks, your designs, your goodwill, all of it as if it belonged to them -- which, in a way, it all does, because, after all, haven't you spent decades, and trillions, to convince them of just that?"
You’ve heard it before from me and others: the days of companies being able to practice top-down communications with their stakeholders (employees, customers, shareholders and community leaders) are numbered.

The Independence Day aliens were set on destroying the human race. Media & marketing will survive the digital Apocalypse, but in very different forms.

Those businesses that are prepared to take transparency and consumer control to heart will also survive. And thrive. They're the people who will be singing the REM song...”it’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.”

For more information about how you can prepare for the new digital world, visit C2M2 Associates. To buy Garfield’s book (and you should), visit thechaosscenario.net.

The Future of Privacy, Courtesy of CSI

So there I was diligently working, a recent re-run of CSI on the television in the background. That’s when I heard it: “It’s not that they don’t believe in privacy, it’s that they value openness.”

Turns out that “they” were people who gave a running dialogue of their life on Twitter, the level of detail shocking to one character who wondered what sort didn't share his conventional view of protecting information: “Don’t these people believe in privacy?”

I’ve had these same conversations with friends, colleagues and family. To a person they lament the so-called loss of privacy they perceive to occur when one joins a social network.

To a person of a certain age, privacy has a very different meaning. To younger people who have grown up sharing and showing all of the events of their lives (and I do mean ALL), privacy is not the precious right their elders prize. They believe in transparency in all things and think everyone else should, too.

For the time being, this is an interesting academic discussion and occasionally fodder for TV show banter. But soon, it will be a significant public and social policy issue as the young people who value transparency over privacy move into positions of authority.

Businesses have always hid to varying degrees behind literal and figurative walls. There are even laws that prevent disclosure of certain types of commercial and personal information. Attorneys, ministers and physicians make a living keeping secrets.

In the future, what will the kids raised on MySpace, Twitter and Facebook do when they take the helm? Will they learn to embrace a level of privacy they’ve never known or will they force new levels of transparency that would make Justice Brandeis cringe.

I’m thinking openness will be the new privacy. What do you think? And which do you value more – transparency or privacy?