Whether or not you agree with the comments made by Whole Foods’ co-founder and CEO John Mackey in a recent op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on the state of US healthcare, the resulting consumer backlash raises interesting questions around establishing and maintaining brand identity in an era of increasing engagement and transparency.

Having an identifiable and vocal face of a company has been a very successful strategy for many companies – Richard Branson of Virgin and Jeff Bezos of Amazon readily come to mind – but it becomes problematic when the opinions of a business leader fail to match up with the perceived message and values of their companies and/or brands, as noted above. Now imagine that situation amplified throughout the entire culture of a company. Social media is doing just that.

As this shift towards openness takes place on both an individual and organizational level, aided by the emergence of social technologies, the feedback loop is getting shorter and shorter. This can be a boon to corporations looking to connect with consumers in an effort to build meaningful relationships and communities around their brands, but it can also backfire. While there’s little doubt that social tools are an effective means of communicating to and reaching out to customers, how much sharing is too much? After all, bad press arguably travels faster than the positive kind, particularly in a culture of almost real time.

While it’s easy to place the onus on our employees and consumers to know the difference between business and personal, these lines are blurring more and more every day so we need to be extremely mindful of how we approach these interactions. There may be no single answer that is applicable for all situations, but leading by example is good place to start.

[image via markus941]