Plato, Hemingway, and Authenticity: Rethinking what’s real
In this cross-posting from the LinkedIn agency influencer program Carat’s Robert Christian argues marketers can achieve authenticity, they’re just going about it in the wrong way.
Allow me for a moment to wonder whether my English degree may actually have professional merit – don’t laugh. I reckon I’ve actually got a shot. I’ve found a common goal to both authors and advertisers that might offer an opportunity to learn from one another – both are desperate to learn the secret of creating ‘authenticity’.
Robert Christian
It’s a hot topic around advertising because it’s what everyone’s telling us they want. The general message is our consumers have trust issues; they don’t believe the carefully curated messages communicated by (what they believe are) soulless corporations fundamentally interested only in profits.
A common reaction by marketers is to conflate authenticity with reproducing who they think their consumers are. Real people, in real places, enjoying their real freedom and celebrating their fellowship in a real community that happens to have just enough space for a product to slot nicely in. The problem with beating people around the head with all this overbearing ‘realness’ is that consumers smell a rat in seconds.
