[Editor's note: This is the first in a three part series about how transparency can reshape business. Part two deals with how to strategically approach transparency; part three addresses unintended consequences.]

What do the Super Bowl and the recent Toyota recalls have in common? It speaks volumes about where you spend your money and how you interact with your customers. A 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl cost $2.4 million in 2010. If you were lucky, your ad aired during one of the Saints' stellar second half drives. If you were unlucky, your slot was during the Who's halftime show. The Who is a band that had pseudo-farewell tours in 1989 and 1999. The fact that they are still playing says more about our inability to innovate in marketing than it does about their longevity.

Think for a second if you had $2.4 million to spend on making your actions, suppliers, and product ingredients more visible to your customers, or on tracking your safety or environmental performance. Imagine if Toyota had spent that sum over the past several years recording concerns regarding unwanted acceleration, conducting a pattern recognition exercise across multiple countries, and publishing those findings online. Imagine if that increased customer feedback about the issue, helping Toyota to narrow down the cause of the problem and expedite the solution.

If Toyota had done this, and had been ahead of the problem instead of behind it, I would not have woken up to a news story on February 4th that recounted in detail how electronic interference can impact automobile acceleration in modern cars, only to go to the Toyota website to read an alert about floor mats. It was like going to an event expecting cutting-edge music and listening to a band whose farewell tour was 21 years ago.

Advertising is about spending money on how you want people to perceive your company. Any Madison Avenue veteran will tell you that for brand recognition, a Super Bowl ad is worth every penny. For some companies they are right. But there is a reason they call it advertising spend -- once a marketing campaign is over, another one begins, with minimal accrued benefits from the first campaign. Who can remember the Super Bowl winner in 2008, let alone any of the advertisements?

{related_content}In contrast, spending time and money on transparency is an investment. It is about who you are now and who you want to be. It is accretive. The more you learn about what goes into your products, about how your products are made in parts of the world you can't spell, about how your products perform under conditions you could not have predicted -- the less you have to pay later to figure these things out. The work Timberland, SC Johnson, and Nike have done to show "what goes in" creates a platform they can build on for years, not a campaign to stand behind for months.

Some CFOs may be worried about an increase in corporate transparency and the cost center they assume it creates. They should not be. Spending on transparency is an investment with long-term returns. Spending on advertising is a cost, sometimes unnecessarily high -- with questionable returns. Not spending money on transparency is an avoided cost with a negative long-term yield. Just ask Toyota.

This is the first in a three part series about transparency. Part two will deal with how to strategically approach transparency; Part three will address unintended consequences.

Stephen Linaweaver is an associate principal at GreenOrder, an LRN company. GreenOrder is a strategy and management consulting firm that helps companies achieve competitive advantage through environmental innovation.

_{Photo CC-licensed by Flickr user Anderson Mancini.}