Last week, Matthew Creamer, a senior writer for Advertising Age, made some excellent points about what he views as the fallacy of "transparency" in business. But, in doing so he unnecessarily, and perhaps inadvertently, threw the baby out with the bath water.

Why? Because the world really has fundamentally changed for businesses and their marketing and communications teams — and also for the media, politicians and other institutions. This change has occurred because of the demise of the "Black Box" mentality that has been forever exploded by the Web and the democratization movement that is its byproduct. I will explain in a moment.

First some background. The above referenced Ad Age article by Mr. Creamer argued that transparency is at best trendy spin, and at worst, a dodge by companies looking to "overcome perceptions of stodginess and authoritarianism." Creamer cites examples of leading companies, like Google and Apple, that thrive on their secrecy and opacity (throw Microsoft in there, too). These leading technology brands "don’t pride themselves on anything approaching two-way dialogue with consumers or journalists or both," said Creamer. OK, that’s true on its face. But, there is so much more to the story than that.

Now, back to the "Black Box." Business and government used to be operated on the theory of the Black Box. Basically, they didn’t tell you anything (or much) about what they did, and acted very much with the attitude that "we know what’s best for you, so just sit back and take it." The impenetrable Black Box had all the answers, making things happen in the dark, away from scrutiny. It was anything but democratic (notice the small "d" in democratic).

Well, those Black Box days are thankfully slipping away, and rapidly. The sunlight really started to flood into American society in the 1960s, having a profound impact both on our political and business cultures. And the more people saw how both laws and sausages were made (formerly hidden by the Black Box), the more they demanded answers about things they didn’t like. (They also demanded more and more sunlight.)

So, this transparency movement that Mr. Creamer derided in his Ad Age article is much older and more significant to society than just a marketing flash in the pan, or a byproduct of Web 2.0 (like user generated content). The fact is, that consumers and citizens today want more information, not less. They want to know what’s in their frozen pizza and whether it contains trans fats. They demand to know how their US Senator is voting on key issues such as Iraq, global warming and healthcare reform. And, they’re very interested in learning about the life expectancy of their iPod batteries. (You will recall that after a disgruntled consumer exposed the problem of iPod’s defective batteries, Apple reluctantly recalled those batteries and made other technological changes, but not before suffering a very public black eye for being both secretive and obstinate).

An Ad Age companion piece written by Eric Webber (one of the publication’s "Small Agency Diary" bloggers), ranted on the subject of business transparency, essentially saying that transparency was not the business of PR. That elicited a flood of email responses from hyperventilating PR types who either defended the honor of their profession, or heavily criticized it for lacking integrity and honesty (in other words, transparency). One of those emails was from Richard Edelman, whose agency suffered at least two black eyes last year for its serious lack of transparency about a blog created for its client Wal-Mart. Needless to say, Mr. Edelman’s response generated a new wave of emails.)

At the risk of going all Golden Rule on you, the best advice I can give to marketers, PR people and politicians, too, is just to tell the truth. Sometimes it hurts telling the truth. But, in the final analysis, the pain will be much less if you get the truth out upfront rather than waiting for it inevitably to come out later. Indeed, as they say, the truth does set you free. And it does always come out in the end.

In our globally networked, Web-centric world, where news, information and culture are transmitted in virtually real time from Boston to Bangalore, telling the truth (call it transparency or what you will) is an excellent rule of thumb for marketers. The notion of transparency probably sounded like a clever target for Ad Age’s Mr. Creamer (business journalists justifiably love to puncture the jargon-heavy trends marketed by ad guys and gals and competing journalists), but he really is swimming against the tide on this one. The new world order is all about more sunshine and transparency, not less. And the sooner marketers learn this fact and start being straight up with their audiences, the sooner they will find more success and less heartburn.

Telling the truth and transparency are definitely Big Ideas that you should be embracing, not shunning.   

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