Radical transparency as marketing of the future?

Amstelveen, October 5, 2023

High in fiber, sugar-free, anti-aging, all natural, durable and again vegan? It's almost too good to be true. Is it necessary to vegan to put on a pack of oatmeal? Or add fiber to a package of breakfast cereals that has added a lot of sugar? There are still marketing tricks with which companies often find loopholes in the law and thus mislead consumers. How do you know which company to avoid, and perhaps more importantly: which company can you count on?

In a world of information overload, honesty becomes a differentiator for brands. Customers appear to be becoming increasingly critical and demand transparency about what they buy and consume. Brands such as Holie Granola, Upfront, and the cosmetics brand The Ordinary respond to this through radical transparency:

• Holy Granola shows consumers that other breakfast brands use hidden sugars, a practice known as 'healthwashing'.
• Upfront, a sports nutrition brand, has created a series of videos debunking various health claims to make consumers aware of misleading information in the supermarket. Upfront stands for transparency and honesty towards consumers. The company therefore puts the nutritional values first on the packaging, without health claims.
• The Ordinary is a cosmetics brand that does not offer products with specific functions, such as an anti-wrinkle cream. The brand has developed all its products in such a way that as a consumer you only buy the active substance, without any marketing or claims about the effect. It does require that the consumer is better informed, because anyone who does not know what the ingredients do will be confused at the shelf.

These types of initiatives not only confront consumers with the large amount of misleading information on the market, but also educate consumers to make the right choice next time. These organizations are starting a trend of increased transparency towards consumers, which in our opinion is a positive development.

In recent years, consumer confidence has been extremely low. In January 2000, consumer confidence reached an all-time high of 36, while consumer confidence in September and October 2022 its lowest point ever achieved with a score of -59.

The fact that brands are now offering radical transparency in external communications is a clear counterpoint that responds to this historically low consumer confidence. Perhaps this radically transparent communication from organizations can actually regain trust. We are curious to see how this trend develops.

Written by Max van der Weide and Marit van der Veldt