Now that people realize that the traces everyone (businesses or individuals) leaves on the net impact their economic activities everyday more, “branding” is becoming a very trendy issue. First “personal” then, logically, “corporate”.

Then, things should be as perfect as possible in a perfect world. Everyone will be able to know everything about anyone, so will be able to make the best possible decisions, companies won’t make “casting mistakes” anymore and applicants will be sure to find employer they perfectly fit with. I don’t know if you share my opinion…but this seems to be too easy to be true…and efficient.

There is, according to be, a big misunderstanding on the starting assumption. Whereas some undestand “transparent information”, some others understand “the most positive information. I’d rather say that everyone want the most transparent information about the others but only want to give positive information about himself. This leads to a win-loose game where everyone looses for a simple reason. The mechanism relies on trust, so, at the very moment the information is biased, trust will disappear and everybody will come back to the usual “it’s useless, it doesn’t work, it’s a sham”.

I feel hard to believe that, even if in a perfect world it would solve everything, the social side of the process, that’s to say the validation of the information by third parties, will change anything. Because there are a lot of people that are not comfortable with all these things and because companies, even if they know people don’t believe them anymore, are still reluctant to make speak those who are believed.

Is it a flash in the pan ? Not at all. But communication in the large sense of the word has to be rethought as a lever in an ongoing improvement process and not only as a way to deliver a message.

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