Umair has a thoughtful post on the role of marketing in a networked economy, and he asks the question, from a marketing strategy point of view, “is the relationship between truth and advantage more powerful today than before?”

The answer of course, is yes. The blogosphere has allowed us to know faster and with more certainty when people in corporations, um, bend the truth, to put it charitably. Does that give an advantage to the authentic and honest? How about those who pretend (see Edelman.)

Good marketing has always been about the unexpected, and actually telling the truth to audiences would certainly shock them — maybe even into making purchases.  But who will craft these messages? Spin generation is the core competency in a lot of places these days. But maybe the tide has turned…

The rules of PR are being rewritten. Honesty and transperancy carry more weight now, just ask Richard Edelman, head of Edelman PR. He blogs an acknowledgment that his agency blew it by fudging on the identify of who was authoring a Wal-Mart blog. Thanks to Google Cache, you can see some of the history here. Click on the first item to see how transparently bogus this thing was. This is one arena in which “fake it till you make it” doesn’t work.

BusinessWeek fills in the backstory here.