Before talking about authentic brands, you should first know that brand authenticity is a perception. It's something that takes place in the mind of the consumer. It's about how the consumer experiences and evaluates the brand. We are therefore talking about a perceived brand authenticity. That means the extent to which consumers evaluate the brand as faithful to itself, sincere towards its customers, motivated by responsibility/carefulness, and how it supports its customers in being faithful to themselves.
In other words, perceived brand authenticity consists of continuity (staying faithful to oneself), credibility (being sincere to customers), integrity (taking responsibility and caring), and symbolism (supporting customers in being faithful to themselves). These factors will be made more concrete below.
Continuity
A brand with history; a timeless brand; a brand that withstands time and trends.
Credibility
A brand that won't deceive you; a brand that fulfills its promises; an honest brand.
Integrity
A brand with a moral; a brand with strong values; a brand that cares about its customers.
Symbolism
A brand that gives meaning to people's lives; a brand that reflects values that people consider important; a brand that allows people to connect with their own self; a brand that connects people with truly important things.
The biggest challenge in brand authenticity is the tension between the commercial interests of the organization behind the brand and the values the brand has within itself. Authenticity is not something you can easily add to your organization. It requires sufficient attention and anchoring from all layers within your company. You don't just start an authentic brand. Steve Jobs (Apple) and Bill Bowerman (Nike) never started their businesses with the idea of setting up an authentic brand. They put their passion and vision into their businesses to change the world a little. Then the companies and their employees remained faithful to the original values and convictions of Jobs and Bowerman. Authenticity is already easily present at the founding of a company, but afterwards it's the art to also remain faithful to what the brand stands for during growth, setbacks, takeovers and, for example, aggressive investors.
According to Australian marketing professor Michael Beverland, authentic brands have a number of behaviors - seven to be exact. While traditional marketing comes from top-down, authenticity comes more from bottom-up. Read: from the customer and not from the marketing department. People love brands with which they can feel connected and understood. If they find such a brand, there is a great chance that they will remain loyal to it. Take Harley Davidson as an example: people connect their identity to this brand. They don't say, "I am the owner of a Harley Davidson." No, they say, "I am a Harley rider!"
Returning to the seven behaviors of authentic brands. Here they are listed:
Brand authenticity can also be viewed from two different perspectives: from a modern perspective and from a postmodern perspective. Both views are about authenticity, but work differently. At their core, both perspectives are about "real" and "fake," but the evaluation is different.
The modern perspective takes a factual evaluation of authenticity. The evaluation comes from the past and is absolutely verifiable. Think of this evaluation as an authentic Picasso painting. It is original and truly made by Picasso. For brands, this is about respecting tradition (we still make our cookies the same way as 100 years ago), an unchanged context (we still make our furniture in the same place where we started), sticking to the way things are manufactured (we still distill our gin in our original stills), and having a unique way of making our products (we still pack everything by hand). You'll notice that this form of authenticity is about verifiable facts that lie in the past. Terms like heritage, origin, originality, and craftsmanship apply here. In this way, you're putting your brand in a sense on lock, as you say you're authentic because you haven't changed. For some brands, this is a good decision, but for others, the postmodern perspective of authenticity is better.
From the postmodern perspective, authenticity is something that takes place in the present and is focused on the future. The focus shifts from facts to perception. With perception, it's about an internal evaluation based on feelings and emotions.
In this perspective, you arrive at the evaluation of authenticity based on these two standards:
In this evaluation, it's all about being meaningful. It's about creating identity and direction. Consumers can then manifest their own selves to others through a brand. Terms like leadership, mission, ethics, and integrity apply here. From the postmodern perspective, it's not about absolute factual truth, but about credibility. Do you believe what the brand says corresponds with how the brand manifests itself?
In both cases (modern or postmodern), you must have a clear understanding of your stance. For this, we have developed the True Story Canvas.