Transparency Done Properly

Had you passed through Terminal 5 of London's Heathrow Airport any time last week, you might have happened upon author Alain de Botton, who was occupying a desk there as the airport's first Writer-In-Residence.

BAA, owner of Heathrow Airport, hired de Botton to spend one week in Terminal 5, observing the passengers and staff of Britain's largest airport. de Botton, the Swiss-British author and philosopher whose How Proust Can Change Your Life brought him acclaim in the U.S. as well as in his home across the pond, will collect his observations into his next book, A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary, to be released in late September. BAA reportedly gave de Botton full physical access to all areas of the airport, as well as full literary access to cover any topic about the airport, down to any cockroaches that he may have seen.

According to Creativity-Online, 10,000 free copies of the book will be given to random Heathrow passengers; the book will also be available for sale at major retailers.

While de Botton says that this book will be more journalist-style than philosopher-style, it is still a bold marketing move for BAA to allow him full creative reign in his disclosure of the workings of the airport, as Heathrow COO Mike Brown points out.

Well done, Heathrow.

If an organization means to promote and publicize itself through an open outsider's perspective, the only way to do so is to allow the outsider to reveal everything - good, bad, and ugly. Transparency can't be done halfway; it can't show only the good, while hiding the unpleasant. Such translucency simply doesn't fly.

If your organization wants to venture into the realm of customer reviews, customer-created-content, customer blogs, etc., it must resign itself to allowing full "creative reign" to those customers. Sure, you might set and enforce some ground rules (no profanity, no obscenity, etc.), but you absolutely cannot restrict content simply because it casts your organization in a bad light. Such censorship will inevitably be found out, and will only sabotage (possibly forever) the much-needed trust of your customers and the public.

Again, I extend my congratulations to BAA for getting it right. I hope that their transparency efforts will result in better air travel and more air travel at Heathrow.