Authentic Marketing Strategy
Consultants Say Consumers Long for Authentic Products and Companies
TIME Magazine labels "authenticity" one of the "10 ideas that are changing the world" today. James Gilmore and Joseph Pine explain the strategy.
Three of the latest buzz words in marketing and branding are "authentic", "inauthentic" and "authenticity."
Business consultants James Gilmore and Joseph Pine II say those words are the key to business and product survival in the future. In fact, "Authenticity" is the title of their latest book, published by Harvard Business School Press, which says a lot about their belief in that subject.
In the March 24, 2008 issue of TIME Magazine, John Cloud writes of authenticity as one of the "10 ideas that are changing the world."
Consumers Long for Authentic Products and Companies
The premise is simple: Today’s consumers are "longing" for authenticity because they find so many fakes and phonies in their lives. If people believe a company, product or service is authentic, they will buy and support it. If they think the company, its products and/or services are inauthentic, the firm is labeled a fake and is headed for failure.
That is a scary scenario because it’s tough to be authentic these days. And, as any smart politician will confirm, it’s easy to get caught being inauthentic. Videos, tape recordings, reporters, bloggers, eyewitnesses, emails, websites, archives and whistle blowers expose fakes every day. It happens in government, business, media, education and even non-profits.
Cloud lists several companies incorporating authenticity in their advertising:
- Highbrow Furniture promotes "Authenticity. Period." It's a nice tie-in to period furniture.
- Kool Cigarettes says "Be Authentic"
- Stole Vodka says "Choose Authenticity."
Authenticity Has to Be Demonstrated
But Gilmore and Pine say just claiming authenticity in an ad probably won’t bring its rewards and benefits. They say authenticity has to be demonstrated and proved. They point to:
- The Geek Squad staging computer repairs as theater.
- Chipotle Mexican Grill backing up its "Food With Integrity" slogan by serving only meat from animals that have never received antibiotics.
- REI, promoting its outdoor gear by building a popular climbing wall and walking trail near its Seattle store.
They might have added Dove Soap’s "Self-Esteem Program" for girls and women.
Gilmore and Pine say that such promotions may not reach as many people as ads do, but they are more effective in establishing authenticity. The consultants wrote:
"Stop saying what your offerings are through advertising and start creating places—permanent or temporary, physical or virtual—when people can experience what those offerings, as well as your enterprise, actually are."
The potential for such promotions is limited only by the individual's or firm’s imagination and creativeness. Cloud wrote that once he started thinking like Gilmore and Pine, he found himself "coming up with seemingly authentic experiences for even the most insipid products."
Authentic Strategy Carries Risk
Once a company claims authenticity, it risks ruin if it doesn’t live up to that claim. For organizations that do not wish to take that risk, Gilmore and Pine provide another option: "Fake-Real."
Using that strategy, a company acknowledges that it is not entirely authentic, preferably in a humorous manner. As an example, they cite the commercial in which Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey brag extensively about Verizon phones, then turn to the camera and ask: "Can we have our money now?"
The authenticity is not in what is said about the product, but in the company’s acknowledgment that it is trying to sell something. That approach has a good chance of being well received in a society where so many people are in the selling business. The hope is that the company authenticity will carry over to its product.
