{"id":7523,"date":"2008-06-25T15:34:35","date_gmt":"2008-06-25T10:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brants.wordpress.com\/?p=114"},"modified":"2021-01-02T10:11:07","modified_gmt":"2021-01-02T04:41:07","slug":"opacity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/2008\/06\/25\/opacity\/","title":{"rendered":"Opacity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">Read two interesting posts, seemingly not very connected, but actually so. The first one was <a href=\"http:\/\/blaiq.typepad.com\/misentropy\/2008\/06\/radical-transparency-and-the-right-to-information.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here<\/a>, (don&#8217;t miss the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wired\/archive\/15.04\/wired40_ceo.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">article<\/a> it has linked to either) and it talks about brands including an RTI clause in their charter, and anyone from a stakeholder (thats including consumers) to competition being able to demand answers from the company\/brand and more importantly, being able to get it. I wonder though, how an RTI clause could co-exist with competitive advantage (brand strategies).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pluggd.in\/2008\/06\/friendfeed-business-model-brand-advertisers-comparison-with-twitter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">second post<\/a> talks about Friendfeed being a great tool for brands since it aggregates the contents from blogs, microblogging platforms, photo sharing services, social bookmarking sites and most possible social media. The snag though is that a Facebook or an Orkut are not accommodated there, yet, and the crowds frequenting the two kinds of sites are not exactly duplicated.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">But yes, the connection between the two posts is transparency, and i feel that in india, we have a long way to go before we reach that state. That&#8217;s because more than a certain set of processes, we are talking about a philosophy here. In the first digital (mini) wave and its aftermath, when blogs became a corporate mantra, how many companies\/brands took it seriously and how many have persisted? For a transparent system to get established and flourish, it needs to start with a strategy thats consumer centric, a strong rationale for why x strategy was chosen over y to achieve a certain strategic objective, the wisdom to understand that we are human, and plans can go wrong, inspite of having backup plans running from b to z, and most importantly the maturity to listen to feedback, accept responsibility and take criticism, but learn from it, fix it and get better.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">When i hear people ask for changes in communication strategy based on very subjective likes and dislikes (sorry, its not always purely subjective, i have also heard &#8216;my wife likes pink&#8217; for a campaign theme color), and when i get this <a href=\"http:\/\/aswiftkick.mu.nu\/Images\/I%20don%27t%20give%20a%20rat%27s%20ass.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">response<\/a> from them when asked about consumer preferences, and when, on hearing that I blog, I am asked to write good about the brands I work with, irrespective of reality, and when FYI (F*** You Instead &#8211; courtesy &#8216;One Night at the Call centre) responsibility strategies are given more importance than the brand&#8217;s performance, and many many more such occurrences, it gives me enough reason to believe that transparency is a long way off.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">On an aside, I read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lbhat.com\/?p=331\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here<\/a> that apparently the blogosphere was abuzz today with the Vodafone ad for iPhone. Interestingly, I saw three tweets today basically asking why the Vodafone customer service couldn&#8217;t be manned by people who knew about iPhone. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\">until next time, mind set<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Read two interesting posts, seemingly not very connected, but actually so. The first one was here, (don&#8217;t miss the article it has linked to either) and it talks about brands including an RTI clause in their charter, and anyone from a stakeholder (thats including consumers) to competition being able to demand answers from the company\/brand <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/2008\/06\/25\/opacity\/\">[&hellip;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"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":[2534,21,23,15,2538],"tags":[97,135,263,278],"class_list":["post-7523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advertising","category-brand","category-internet","category-social-networking","category-ideas","tag-friendfeed","tag-iphone","tag-transparency","tag-vodafone"],"aioseo_notices":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7523"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15010,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7523\/revisions\/15010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscrypts.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}