The Blur of Authenticity

 

 

 

"All marketing, advertising, and branding

is done in the pursuit of one thing: perception.

What you’re perceived to be is indelible,

sometimes even unshakeable.

The perception of brand authenticity, well,

that’s the most powerful perception of all.

Authenticity is trust.

Authenticity, more importantly, is value.”

(Davies, 2020)

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After the start of the Covid period, authenticity became more popular in marketing. As Andy Morley, head of marketing at Uber ANZ, says “Ultimately the biggest legacy of COVID-19 will be greater authenticity from brands” (AdNews, 2020).

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It seems that authenticity is increasingly becoming a problem that brands must pay attention to. However, is authenticity just a new marketing popular word, or is it really concerned by consumers?

the 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer suggests that consumers are hungry for compassionate and factual messaging from brands. In addition，69% of U.S. Edelman Trust Barometer survey respondents said they will avoid brands, in the future, they see placing profits ahead of people during the pandemic.

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A survey from Stackla (2019) showed that a whopping 90% of consumers said that authenticity is important when deciding which brands they like and support. In addition, consumers can not only distinguish differences but also punish those brands who try to fake it by disconnecting them online ——especially young consumers. In fact, 30% of millennials unfollow a brand on social media because they find untrue content (Stackla, 2017).

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The interesting thing is that

although market practitioners and consumers

all seem to pay more and more attention to brand authenticity,

there is no unified concept about it.

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Basically, from marketing literature, we can see two different perspectives of defining authenticity.

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(1)    Authenticity from inside views of brands:
One approach stresses objective dimensions from the brand management perspective (Grayson and Martinec, 2004; Beverland, 2006). For example, Brown et al. (2003) state that brands with a sense of history and connection with traditional cultures, regions, and core beliefs obtain a distinctive identity that can add to its authenticity. Moulard et al. (2016) also advocate the idea that is the intrinsic motivation of the brand managers and the passion for their products – not the brand’s commercial motivations – that make an authentic brand.

 

(2)    Authenticity from the perspective of consumers:
Another approach emphasizes the subjective, contextualized, and socially constructed nature of authenticity taking the consumer perspective (Grazian, 2003; Leigh et al., 2006; Napoli et al., 2014). Within this view, authenticity is constructed as being influenced by consumers’ interpretation, knowledge, interest, and personal tastes (Grazian, 2003). As this view, brand authenticity might be a “master concept” integrating lots of desirable attributes, e.g. continuity, originality, reliability, and naturalness (Bruhn et al., 2012); credibility, integrity and symbolism; and originality and genuineness, accuracy, connectedness, integrity, legitimacy, originality, and proficiency (Nunes et al., 2021). 

 

These empirical studies, although sharing some similarities, have shown no consensus in defining the dimensional structure of authenticity, reinforcing Cohen’s (1988) view that authenticity is a fluid construct that can manifest itself in different ways for different types of products or brands. Also, all of these findings confirm the view that the multiplicity in authenticity dimensions is the by-product of the verification process where individuals rely on different self-relevant cues to evaluate truth and essence in a brand in different situations (Beverland & Farrelly, 2010; Newman, 2016). 

 

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From these numerous points of view,

while scholars are discussing the value of authenticity,

the "authenticity" they discuss may not be the same one.

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I hear you are asking, what dimension of measurement should a brand use to consider about authenticity?

A survey shows that although 92% of marketers believe most or all of the content they create resonates as authentic with consumers, 51% of consumers say less than half of brands create content that resonates as authentic (Stackla,2019).

The data confirms the gap between consumer cognition and brand cognition. As Gilmore and Pine (2010) point out:

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Managers cannot subjectively judge that what is authentic.

The things which are authentic to you

may not be authentic by your customers.

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Perhaps, before finding everything out, we need to see exactly what consumers are looking for.