Commercial Intimacy

Heart on your sleeve or in your pocket?

Like never before, customers are being exposed to the head and heart of the businesses they buy from – or at least the market’s view of it – thanks to the proliferation of communications channels that give equal voice to an individual and an organisation. Beyond specifications or pricing detail of a product, potential buyers are faced with weighing up the opinions of other customers on any manner of related subject – not least the ethics, corporate citizenship, legal history, financial integrity – of the organisation they’re looking to purchase from. The backlash on Adidas by Polish graffiti artists and formation of the Adisucks facebook page is a fantastic example.

All well and good we say – power to those who invest in a clear corporate conscience. Transparency and openness is a good thing.

But the longer term implications are worth pondering. Does the threat of ambush by the masses really encourage greater integrity by corporates – or does it simply stifle innovation and limit boundary pushing? Worse still, does it actually perpetuate a greater propensity for guarded, whitewashed communications by organisations to avoid a social media headache?