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Business Practice

Business and WikiLeaks: There’s nothing to fear

by Andrew Swenson

I normally love the Economist, but every once and a while the mag gets it slightly wrong. So it was for a brief article regarding WikiLeaks in the December 11th edition that told us to “Be Afraid” as we face a world where our corporate secrets are increasingly unsafe.

It’s not that the reporting was bad, that was right on (albiet painfully obvious):

The State Department has learned what the music and film industries learned long ago: that digital files are easy to copy and distribute, says Bruce Schneier, a security expert. Companies are about to make that discovery, too. There will be more leaks, and they will be embarrassing.

Facepalm.

Corporate execs are just now afraid? Everyone who understands the internet has known that this day was coming. After all, the Internet is just an agreement, a technical structure designed to copy bits of data and move them from point A to point B.

We’ve got people turning clock radios into servers now. Seriously. Someone’s alarm clock could be at the root of your company’s demise. Thanks to WikiLeaks, all the execs now understand how devastatingly real that possibility is.

The problem though, is that we shouldn’t need to be afraid.

Cue corporate paranoia anyway

Pete Blackshaw, marketing chief at NM Incite (a Nielsen & McKinsey venture) predicted that 2011 will see a rise of what he called “defensive branding” in his AdAge article last week:

While 2010 kicked off with high levels of almost irrational exuberance over social media, this month’s Twitter-powered Wikileaks attack on MasterCard, Visa and other major brands primed 2011 for higher doses of brand and corporate paranoia. [...] Highly adaptive “sense and respond” listening infrastructure will move from “nice to have” partner to social-media engagement to reputational table stakes.

Certainly Blackshaw’s take is a bit self serving (NM Incite is a social media intelligence agency), but he’s right in diagnosing paranoia. But I hold that “defensive branding” (although we may see more of it) is a bit short-sighted.

We don’t need better defense to abate our fears.

We need better business.

So as the folks who read the Economist and AdAge are scrambling to keep the lid on their secrets or defend what’s been exposed, I’d like to propose an alternative: do business so that you aren’t devastated if your secrets get out.

I’m not suggesting that we should all run with an open playbook, but what if your secrets were painfully mundane—a simple extension of what you claim your organization to be through your marketing, your public relations, and most importantly, your products?

In order to do this, we would have to commit ourselves not just to making ethical decisions, but to making decisions that create thick value.

As Umair Haque defines it, thick value is “is sustainable, meaningful value,” opposed to thin value, or “profit through economic harm to others” (e.g. banks that invested in assets that were profitable but turned out to be meaningless).

Creating thick value means that we have to seek significance in our business actions. We have to ask ourselves not only if our decisions are ethically responsible today, but if they also are sustainable and meaningful for our customers and the larger economy.

We must break our myopic focus on next quarter’s profits.

Instead, we must lift our eyes from our navels and look out over the horizon to determine how our actions today can create meaningful products and services that enrich our customer’s lives.

Thick value diminishes leak fears.

True customer focus means making customers better off. If all of your decisions—from product choices to marketing messages—are based on helping them lead a more meaningful existence, then no leak can harm you.

In fact, if you’re demonstrating thick value to customers, a leak probably won’t reveal any information that’s all that surprising.

In short it comes down to being who you say you are.

So don’t fear WikiLeaks, unless of course, you’ve got something to hide.

-Andrew

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  • http://jasonmarkow.com Jason Markow

    On ‘fear’ and L.A.-

    Lets start with fear- Andrew, this post is dead on. I agree that The Economist got it slightly wrong here, but for different reasons. I think that we should ‘be afraid’. NOT for the potential leak of information, but the potential denial of said information with the ‘agreement’ of the internet facing major changes->

    http://act.boldprogressives.org/sign/sign_netneutrality_3things/

    That’s what I DO fear in this case.

    So what about L.A.? Reflecting on the line “do business so that you aren’t devastated if your secrets get out” I can’t help but reflect on my time spent in L.A. this year.

    That line is so seemingly obvious and loaded with common sense, but I fear for many (particularly those trying to ‘make it’ out in L.A.) it is nothing more than an academic ideology. There are far more people that think they simply ‘don’t have enough’ than there are those who are content with what they do have.

    The problem lies with those willing to stab a few backs on their way to success. I have spent more time in the Hollywood Hills than I care to this year mingling with the occasional genuine, passionate, and authentic superstar amongst a sea of two faced, back stabbing, snake oil salesman types willing to do anything and I mean ANYTHING to achieve a perceived level of success.

    IMHO, far too many are not content with the hand they were dealt and don’t have/see any way to “do business so that [they] aren’t devastated if [their] secrets get out.” so they screw others over. This is not going to change.

    One of the lessons of Marketing101 was that this thing you refer to as ‘thick value’ is easy to apply to products/services that are thick in value, but in reality… most aren’t. Many (if not most) products/services that most marketers work with are, er, less than ‘valuable’.

    The real question is if there is an absence of ‘Thick value’- who initiates a change? Is it the responsibility of the marketer to say “This product is not to the quality/standards of our message” or the product manager to say “This message is not an accurate reflection of our product’?

    • http://wordpost.org Andrew Swenson

      Thanks for the thoughtful response Jason.

      Your diagnosis of the problem is spot on. History has proven to us that some people will do whatever they can to get ahead. Even in my best dreams of what our economy might be, I know we’ll still have that.

      I think that’s partly human nature to want more the easiest way possible, and partly because it’s harder to do business ethically than it is to screw people over. It’s harder to create business value that benefits everyone. But I think for the longterm survival of our economy we all have to rethink what kind of value we’re creating. We’re condemned to bubble-bust otherwise.

      I mean, return on assets of publicly traded American companies will approach zero by 2020. Obviously something’s not working.

      As for who initiates change—I believe the tone of any organization is most effectively set by people in leadership positions (e.g. C-suite). If it’s clear that a company values creating products that will help others (and still make a profit) it becomes a part of how they make decisions.

      Much harder is the case of the organization that has a marketer or product manager who is concerned about these issues and tries to make a change. To them I say good luck. They don’t have an easy battle ahead of them.

      Thanks again Jason.