Hey, boys and girls! Who wants to talk about the exciting world of compliance?? WHOO HOO!!!!!!!! Now don’t fight; you’ll all get to pick a topic. There’s corporate governance, policy management, incident reporting…so many goodies to choose from!

Alright, seriously, though. No one gets excited to hear about compliance. Why? Because the GRC industry has done a commendable job of making itself feel as horrifically staid and unexciting as possible. And while the work companies do in this space certainly requires a level of formality, the solutions they offer and the way they talk about them don’t.

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We’ve said it before…

…and we’ll probably say it again: The Kids, They Will Mess With Your Brand.

May we present to you the Hutzler 571 Banana Slicer.

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When entrepreneurs approach venture firms, they come bearing questions. Lots of questions. Questions like: “Do these people care about me?” “Do they have any expertise in my field?” “Are they going to be hard to work with?” …and so forth. This is natural. You’d feel the same way if you were showing off your pride-and-joy to a boardroom full of strangers.  So we’ve always found it strange that most VC firms tend to settle for saying “Look at us! Look at all the logos successful companies we’ve worked with!” as if that’s supposed to be some kind of substitute for telling people who they are and what they stand for. To us, both ends of the VC/entrepreneur relationship are driven by – surprise – ideas. The entrepreneur has an idea, and the VC firm has (or at least ought to have) more than one thought on how to bring that idea to life. So we’re clearly very pleased to see Battery Ventures’ new Mortar-built website place a premium on ideas – the good ones entrepreneurs have had, the innovative ones Battery has used to promote them and of course, the results.

It’s a smart conversation to have. (And a rather stylish-looking presentation, if we do say so ourselves.)

We’ve been accused of taking too long to get to the point. ⬆ This is the point. ⬆ Read the post anyway.

So we’ve spoken before about brands and Radical Honesty. We’re going to speak about it again, as this is a lot for marketers to get used to. Remember, we’re the same people who used to go home and sleep like babies after a hard day of telling the world about Camels satisfying your T-zone. But so many nice folks sent us links to this Daniel Baylis article in Fast Company, that we figured we’d better pipe up once again.

It’s a good little article with a couple important takeaways. Like this one:

“The biggest misconception is that brand perfection is necessary before honesty is a valid brand strategy.”

That’s nice, right there. It reminds us that people, for the most part, want to like you. They’re not only looking for a reason to buy, they’ll even help you make your case. “But baby, we need that 75,000 BTU grill! For the children! Won’t you think of the children!?”

This one, too:

“In a recent report on transparency in corporate reporting among the 105 largest publicly listed multinational companies, it’s surprising to see that oil companies such as BP and ExxonMobil (also far from perfect) rank much higher in transparency than popular tech companies such as Google and Apple. And in terms of integrity, public perception of Google and Apple continue to fluctuate. If I were a PR executive at these tech companies, my palms would be sweaty.”

Excellent point. Say what you want about BP and ExxonMobil – they’re evil, but they’re reasonably on the up-and-up about it. Meanwhile, Google and Apple, two brands that once possessed halos as bright as supernovaas, now battle it out to see who can embrace the dark side of the Force more quickly.

Our point? We go on and on about Conversation Marketing because we believe your brand is part of a conversation. Moreover, we think you ought to be a good conversationalist. You already have impeccable etiquette – we’ve seen your posture and your Latin declination – don’t forget to use it. Be honest about yourself – customers have highly-developed bullshit radar systems. Have a sense of humor about yourself – better to beat the world to the punch. In general, be someone you wouldn’t mind being stuck in the corner at a party with.

The big finish? This – Mr. Baylis spent a whole lot of column-inches full of words telling you the following: Be honest. Be nice.

Thanks for reading.