One of the most curious things about working with marketing, research, consumer behavior, and trends is that we spend so much time talking about other people's biases, heuristics, rationalizations, and aspirations, but very little about our own. It's as if we, regardless of which side of the table we're on, are magically exempt from the inconsistencies and self-deceptions that affect the other humans we study.
Are we exceptions to the rule or just really bad at seeing ourselves from the outside? I have bad news if you believe the first alternative...
This text is the first in a series about lies we choose to believe.
In art and culture, authenticity can refer to the genuine expression of a cultural tradition, for example: an authentic Mexican restaurant (as opposed to something more adapted to local taste, fusion, etc.).
In existentialist philosophy, authenticity is a central concept that refers to the correspondence between a person's actions and their deepest values and convictions - it's being true to oneself.
In the context of human relationships, being authentic means acting without social masks, presenting oneself in a truthful way without pretensions.
Authentic is a word that has various meanings and applications. These are some of the main ones:
For brand discussions, the last three seem to make the most sense and suggest a commitment to values beyond making money. But first, what relationship does authenticity have with success?
It's demonstrably untrue that authenticity leads to more success or is the root cause of success, at least when we talk about individuals. History is full of episodes of extremely authentic and original artists and other creative professionals who died unknown and poor. Many of those considered geniuses today only received recognition posthumously or at the end of their lives - Van Gogh is perhaps the best-known example. Being authentic, in the sense of being true to oneself and legitimate, can indeed be more memorable in the long term and create legacy - it's a long-term strategy, not a shortcut.
The parallel with brand building is almost obvious: it only reinforces that strong branding is consistency + distinctive assets, which in the case of art, we can understand as a unique and recognizable style (by this criterion, Romero Britto would fit here - is he authentic or not? Tell me in the comments). The problem is that before this works, the thing needs to be known and have a minimum of interested parties to keep the ball rolling (Product market fit? Mental availability and physical availability?), which are problems that no degree of authenticity solves.
Music is a great parallel for talking about authenticity because artists are both people and brands at the same time, and the intensity of the emotional and symbolic bonds that admirers create with them are a reference for those who work with brands.
In music, for each unique and authentic genius like Miles Davis or Gilberto Gil, we have hundreds of successes fabricated from conception, with the Monkees in the 60s, through Milli Vanilli in the 80s (who didn't even really sing their own songs!), the horde of American boy bands from the 00s, to Max Martin, who turned making hits into a formula, and K-pop which took pre-existing formulas to the nth power, with talent selection and training that are a mix of corporate graduate program and survival reality show, with "personalities" defined with audience identification in mind and extremely rigid rules of conduct because of brand safety.
In Brazil, since "Meteoro" in 2009, we've been in a long cycle of audience expansion and domination of sertanejo in our music market. This commercial power undoubtedly has merits, but authenticity is certainly not its most striking characteristic. Sorocaba is the closest we have to a Max Martin or perhaps a contemporary version of Sullivan and Massadas.
One could argue that there is nothing less authentic than planned, derivative, formulaic, and mass-produced success, and yet it's clear how this doesn't affect the resounding success of these formulas at all. Is authenticity really what sells and what people want?
From the double-entendre Carnival songs of a hundred years ago, through Elvis's pelvic movements, to the biggest Carnival hit of 2014 and also this year's, if there is one repeated and consistent element in what becomes successful in mass culture (and also in social media, that's why the expression "thirst trap" exists), that element is vulgarity, not authenticity. But that doesn't warm the heart or reinforce the beliefs of those who read the report or post, right? Here's a warning for insight buyers who only listen to those who say what you want to hear.
Our perception of what is authentic is a function of:
In general, those who give importance to less visible authenticity, at least in part build identity by positioning themselves in opposition to the popular, belonging to a restricted group, or build status by positioning themselves as knowledgeable or understanding.
There is a clear parallel between these groups and what Malcolm Gladwell calls mavens (something like connoisseurs or enthusiasts) in The Tipping Point and what design thinking calls the "extreme user," and contrary to the oft-repeated lie, this behavior has nothing to do with age or youth (even though youth is a critical period of identity construction and experimentation), but rather with the relationship with the object of interest - be they enthusiasts of specialty coffees, obscure musical genres, art films, minimalist travelers, mileage program optimizers, and numerous other groups.
This partly explains why there are so many products, services, and ideas that never cross the chasm of innovation. On one hand, there are audiences that don't want "their things" to become popular. Scarcity doesn't just affect the value of physical things - it also affects the value of symbolic things. On the other hand, some things are "too authentic" to have massive success. Is it because they aren't known enough and/or lack product market fit with larger audiences, or because they're too weird, radical, or sophisticated to reach wide distribution?
This is the premise that gave rise to the very idea of coolhunting, which is fundamentally infiltrating subcultures hunting for emerging aesthetics, symbols, behaviors, and values that can be appropriated by brands and commercialized for larger audiences. Similarly, numerous brands have built broad audiences on top of smaller communities using authentic originating stories to deliver symbolic value, identity, belonging, and status, for example:
But why is it a moving target and constant dilution? Because...
Capitalism invariably appropriates and transforms everything into a market, including its harshest criticisms. The financial incentive to expand audience and revenue is in a constant tug of war with commitment to values beyond making money.
Expanding depends on who we're willing to alienate. This movement is clear even in politics: various candidates seen as radical are pressured to moderate their discourse (i.e., make it palatable to the majority) to get elected. Without making occasional nods to their bases, they can quickly be considered "sellouts" or "traitors" - a type of authenticity bankruptcy.
Many creative professionals hated when Apple started using Intel processors and working better on interoperability with Windows to broaden its appeal to the general public. It was this move that took Mac from a niche place to enormous growth in laptops and desktops in the second half of the '00s - many people bought their first Mac during this time and were "converted." The result is that in richer countries (Western Europe, North America, rich countries in Asia and Oceania), they hold 10% or more share in various markets, securing fourth place in laptops with much better margins than competitors.
Going back to the music parallel, at the turn of the '90s, when heavy metal was beginning to leave the top of the charts, the pressure for mainstream success and selling more in the US made some of the biggest bands of the time change strategy, which generated revolt in some more ardent fans. Metallica put two ballads on the Black Album (1991), Iron Maiden put "Wasting Love" on Fear of the Dark (1992), Judas Priest, arguably more authentic, went in the opposite direction (they must like Al Ries!) and made their heaviest album up to that point with no ballads at all, Painkiller (1990). The Black Album sold 15 times more than the other two, but people are still discussing this move today. Metallica is widely considered the most commercially successful metal band in history.
But it doesn't always work out. Fred Perry, the men's fashion brand historically linked to tennis, ska, and mods in the UK, had to remove one of its most recognized shirt models from the market due to its association with violent and authoritarian groups - and it wasn't the first time this happened. The meltdown of share value and brutal drop in sales in Europe strongly suggest that expanding Tesla's audience from those interested in technology, integrated service, and electrification to those who share the leadership's values may be an impossible battle to win - even with the product remaining exactly the same!
There's a wonderful book from 2010, The Authenticity Hoax, by journalist and philosopher Andrew Potter, which was very visionary for the time it was written. He explores the origins of the idea of authenticity and evaluates the impact of digital culture on it.
If Simon Sinek is the Rousseau of the corporate world, who says those cute things that we find lovely to hear and warm our hearts but that deep down we know are more ideals to be pursued than how things really work, Andrew Potter is more like Nietzsche or Schopenhauer: a revealer of uncomfortable truths, a Band-Aid ripper. Some excerpts:
Authenticity is like authority or charisma: if you have to tell people you have it, then you probably don’t. The second, related point is that authenticity has an uneasy relationship with the market economy. This is because authenticity is supposed to be something that is spontaneous, natural, innocent, and “unspun,” and for most people, the cash nexus is none of these.
Look around. Is there anyone out there who does not consider him or herself to be an “antihero of authenticity”? Anyone who embraces authority, delights in status-seeking, loves work, and strives for conformity? Sure, there are a few, we even have names for them. We call them drones, widgets, squares, yuppies, fascists, but nobody ever admits to being a drone or a yuppie or a widget. Living inauthentically is always something other people do. In which case, what is surprising is just how much apparent inauthenticity there is out there.
Conspicuous authenticity raises the stakes by turning the search for the authentic into a matter of utmost gravity: not only does it provide me with a meaningful life, but it is also good for society, the environment, even the entire planet. This basic fusion of the two ideals of the privately beneficial and the morally praiseworthy is the bait-and-switch at the heart of the authenticity hoax.
From the digitization of media onwards, the attitude of rejecting the popular (and building identity, belonging, and status with it) is so mainstream and dominant that it creates and feeds gigantic parallel markets:
The very idea of the hipster (another category that nobody admitted to belonging to, but visible everywhere!), much discussed in the past decade, was the last visible bastion of a supposed "global counterculture," reducing the idea of authenticity to a socially acceptable rebellion primarily expressed through consumption. Ten years ago, bearded men in plaid shirts were the majority in advertising agencies, as uniformed as the fleece-vested Wall Street types they love to mock. In the end, we are all cosplayers of the groups we aspire to belong to at some level, but blind to our own adaptation strategies.
We find it funny to see teenagers walking in groups dressed alike at the mall, but we don't see the uniforms we ourselves wear.
Our taste formation nowadays has machine intermediaries in countless instances, which is very different from the arbiters of "good taste" of the past such as record executives, magazine editors, professional critics, and other gatekeepers.
With this, the idea of “selling out" or "betraying the movement" no longer makes sense for artists and creatives, because in a context where the intermediaries are primarily algorithms and platforms, the overwhelming responsibility of promoting one's own ideas and works falls directly on those who produce them - we even celebrate this capacity more than artistic merit in the corporate world (e.g., Arctic Monkeys, Anitta). The problem is that if everyone is indie but what succeeds in the algorithm is just patterns and formulas, the incentive for sameness is tremendous.
In various different markets, one can observe a sameness (inauthenticity?), which suggests both risk aversion and that it's being commercially rewarded:
If sameness and predictability sell well, what incentive exists to produce more authentic things? If the authentic sells less, who the hell "wants authenticity" from brands?
Perhaps we've been hearing so much talk about community, clubs for this and that, newsletters, and offline life lately because in smaller social circles we can be, besides more present, a bit more truthful and less performative.
If the algorithm is increasingly perceived as the "system" and dominant force, are these unintermediated and eventually analog spaces the new fanzines?
The classic Jobs to be Done analogy applies perfectly here. We don't want authenticity directly, we want the belonging and status that being associated with things we see as authentic delivers to us. If we are ants, authenticity is the aphid (something we cultivate) and not the sugar (something we consume). The individual cost of real authenticity is high: isolation, loneliness, among others. If there's one point of agreement in psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience, it's that we are deeply tribal animals and this affects an enormous amount of our consumption and life choices.
This also happens through rejection: we don't want to be associated with things we perceive as inauthentic or that burn our reputation. That's why, for example, there's "private listening" on Spotify - so that all those things you're embarrassed to listen to won't appear in your yearly Spotify Wrapped. What we really avoid is the erosion of our social capital - if what I use to represent myself socially loses value, my value falls with it!
To truly understand how the minds work of those we want to win over as an audience, first we need to recognize the lies we tell ourselves.
If the search for authenticity is, as Andrew Potter argues, an egoic defense that comes from our inability to see and accept how much we sacrifice of ourselves as individuals for the approval of others, for belonging, and for status, isn't it time we saw things as they are and delivered what our clients are really looking for? And if instead of offering them something that is relative and transitory, we built on firmer ground? To close this edition, one last recommendation: Seth Godin on Tim Ferriss's podcast talking about (ta-da!) belonging, status, and strategy. Thank you for reading to the end and until the next edition!
