And why every attempt at transparency seems to backfire.
Among some friends and colleagues there's a running joke that, when it comes to tech and crisis communications, there is one golden rule; a strategy so powerful and airtight that it can virtually ensure your company will weather the most harrowing scandals. I'm going to let you in on it now. First rule of tech PR: never share anything. Ever.
There are some — most notably, Amazon — that observe the rule and worship at the church of radio silence. And, for the most part, it works quite well. Tech news cycles are as short as they come and, when it comes to technology, consumers have perfected the art of selective memory in favor of convenience.
The downside of secrecy, of course, is that you develop a reputation for secrecy. And so, in recent months, some of the tech giants have sought to defy the golden rule, to appear transparent, and to pull back the curtain a bit. What they've discovered is the Catch-22 of tech PR right now: Consumers and the media love your product, and demand transparency — until they actually learn what's going on behind the scenes.
The most recent example comes this week in an NPR piece, which goes behind the scenes of Google's "experimental newsroom," which the company created for the World Cup in order to "turn popular search results into viral content."
Google, which has treated its algorithms as competitive secrets since it launched, no doubt saw the piece as an opportunity to highlight a new, fun trend-based initiative. Previously, Google Trends have been widely reported on and seen as a harmless way to harness and demonstrate the power of the company's data and algorithms. But the NPR piece took a different tone, opting instead to focus on Google using its proprietary data with a "clear editorial bias" and filtering out negative search queries to deliver information that people are more likely to share. From the piece:
After the dramatic defeat by Germany, the team also makes a revealing choice to not publish a single trend on Brazilian search terms. Copywriter Tessa Hewson says they're just too negative. "We might try and wait until we can do a slightly more upbeat trend."
It's enough to trigger an already-heightened sense of unease in tech and media spheres. On one side, media narratives have been known to sensationalize small, internal and experimental initiatives inside tech companies as indications of future strategy. And on the other, there's the search giant's seeming desire to curate its data to make news, which feels, if not a little bit shady, almost impossible to compete with. Google, big data's towering overlord, is entering the newsroom game! The world's most powerful information giant is filtering your news like everyone else! And doing so with readily admitted human bias!
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