Social Web Breakfast

“Get naked and rule the world” – in its April issue, Wired magazine called on companies to communicate with radical transparency. The 3rd Social Web Breakfast this morning addressed the issue with a discussion on  “Unternehmenskommunikation im Social Web: Ehrlich oder sexy?”. Guest speaker and viral marketing expert Markus Roder focused on the question, and gave responses on the type of companies and brands for which complete transparency is the right choice, and which companies are better off not telling the whole story.

Markus Roder described four different brand types: trophy brands, aspiration brands, attitude brands and tribal brands. His advice: Find out which brand you belong to and adjust the level of transparancy accordingly. Here you can see a few of the 30 guests mulling over his advice:

Obviously XING is “type 3”, an “attitude brand”: Customers forming a community, customers who are communicating a lot, and communication which cannot be controlled. Attitude brands are well advised to tell the truth and to offer a high level of transparency. As for XING, we do our best – with this blog for example