If a watchdog group, a government, publication or a citizen uprising forces you to be transparent, you have already lost.  Any trust, marketshare and reputational bonus points your advertising and/or actions earned you is depleted.

QSRweb.com a publication for the Quick Serve Restaurant industry (sounds better than "Fast Food, eh?) wrote this headline about Taco Bell's recent "beef authenticity" issue:  "Taco Bell fights back with Transparency".  They miss the point - it's not fighting back, it's rolling over.  It's getting caught.  If you are forced to be transparent, it's too late.  If you get caught polluting, you pay a fine.  But that doesn't make the violation go away, it's just the price you pay.  For brands (green, lohas, blue or otherwise), the price is marketshare and reputation.  And the costs to regain those losses are tangible and impact your bottom line.

From the article on QSRweb:

"According to YouGov BrandIndex, which interviews 5,000 people daily from across the country, Taco Bell’s Index scores fell from 25.2 to 11.7 since the suit was filed Jan. 19. It is now below the sector’s average score of 12.2."

Here's the other way to "do transparency" - from a manufacturer of outdoor gear describing their backpack:

“…the Chacabucco Pack embodies no environmental innovation. The nylon is virgin, its polyurethane coating is solvent-rather than water-based, and like all of our products and rainwear, it has DWR (durable water repellent) surface water-repellent that involves the use of PFOA [author’s note: perfluorooctanoic acid]. The pack is not recyclable”

"No environmental innovation", "...not recyclable"; it's hard to believe this language coming from one of the most environmentally progressive companies on the planet.  But that's what  Patagonia's Footprint Chronicles is designed to do - to be radically transparent.

These moments of radical transparency are coming.  But still, most of what we see is really  translucency and selective data-points in sustainability reports.  But moments of hyper-transparency will change the game again.  I don't like to think Taco Bell was being necessarily deceptive about their beef - they just didn't know people cared.  And we all have operational blind spots.  But now is the time to start looking for them and fixing and disclosing them.  Transparency is not a very successful reaction strategy, but it is an amazing proactive strategy.  Those who master it early will endure and profit.

This is the revolution we have been waiting for.  All that dialog about "going green" or "blue" was just an important evolutionary step on the road to the uprising.  The real prize is authenticity and transparency.  This is going to be good....