Authenticity Has Become Inauthentic

While discussing this blog post, 5 World Changing Ways to Avoid BS and Be More Believable, my friend James (@JamesJetsOften) said the following in a tweet:

Powerfully authentic #brand story+ #advocates bring 'legendary' connection. People r smart, it's more than an #adspend. ;-)

All of these ideas, combined with a recent NYAMA event on Millennials and several Advertising Week panels I attended earlier in the month, got me thinking about the use of "authenticity" as a marketing buzz word.

When this term first started gaining traction, it was refreshing and disruptive and innovative - it was a buzz word that could be described by other buzz words. How meta. Yet now I fear we have reached a point at which "authentic" brand initiatives have become anything but.

Marketers regularly discuss how to craft authentic experiences. If you have crafted it, presumably with a particular end goal and/or ROI in mind, it isn't all that authentic. Not that truly authentic experiences don't exist; perhaps "organic" is a better word to distinguish unfettered consumer experiences that aren't over-engineered by marketers.

I must also bring to this discussion the second Sonmi chapter in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, the book I am currently reading. This chapter reveals [SPOILER] a society that centers around corporations and is so completely controlled that the leaders ("Unanimity") manufacture and manage their own resistance group to keep the lower classes in check. Every rebellion or uprising is carefully planned from beginning to end, making the participants mere players on a grand stage.

While that chapter and its society are set far in the future and display clear dystopian elements not reflective of our government and society, the concept of a society obsessed by brands is not all that distant from today's consumer culture. In Sonmi's world, a picture is a kodak (little "k"), a car is a ford, shoes are nikes, coffee is starbuck, etc. This is not much of a leap from a culture that calls copy machines of any brand "Xerox machines", and facial tissues "Kleenex," even if they are really Puffs.

Today's consumers are very aware of the ways in which companies try to win their business, and we all drink the Kool Aid, so to speak. We buy into marketing, even though we know we are being manipulated, whether it is labeled as an "authentic" experience or not. Today's brand game is one of subtle push and pull by both consumers and marketers alike. "Authentic" marketing campaigns rely on the complicity of consumers in order to be successful. As social, crowd sourcing, and user generated content continue to grow and become more prevalent, consumers are in effect becoming unpaid marketers for brands of all stripes.

The brands themselves prefer to call these consumers "brand ambassadors" in yet another attempt to create authentic connections, but even that has become murky territory, with celebrities paid to tweet endorsements and bloggers incentivized to promote certain products. Such practices foster in consumers a lack of trust, which is vital to true authenticity.

This is not to say that all brands are doing it wrong; it is simply becoming harder to determine which brands are doing it right.