I like this. There’s a culture of transparency kinda bubbling about. Have you noticed? People seem to be wanting to acknowledge to the world where they’re going wrong, or veering toward pretentiousness, in a spirit of “we’re all in this together, aren’t we?”.
I quite love the “Shit xxx say” videos doing the traps. Mostly because they’re not cynical or cruel. They’re acknowledging. They seek, I think, to enroll us all in the same story: “Yeah, I know I’ve got a little caught up, and I’m a little affected…”
And the net result is to connect us further with our humanity.
Which, dammit, is all I really want from this life.
I also like that some companies are getting in on the act, not hiding behind the constructed messaging anymore. It’s a mild breath of fresh air. Canadian Yoga brand Lululemon made this pisstake of the painful stuff people-who-are-just-a-little-bit-too-intimate-with-their-own-hamstrings can say. Clever. Brave. It works.
The cynical among us could say brands and businesses don’t have a choice anymore. Everything is transparent, everything Google-able and exposable, and you might as well get in first and acknowledge your faults before your narky customers dig them up.
But Trendwatching recently flagged the new movement: Flawsome….where companies expose their flaws, in a humane way, creating an overall awesomeness.
They describe this leaning toward transparency thus: