One of the indisputable laws of social media is authenticity. It’s the Tao of Social Media; it must be rendered; it’s what matters. We’ve all heard this so often, from so many people, that it has become gospel.  Brand managers will say with earnestness and sincerity how important it is for them to engage with consumers in an “authentic manner.”

But the truth is people don’t always want authenticity and brands rarely follow through on delivering it.

What is authenticity?

First, let’s start by getting a handle on what we mean when we say authenticity.  Is it being ‘real’ or ‘truthful’? Is it talking with the ‘brand voice’? Maybe it’s being ‘conversational.’ Ultimately none of those definitions is going to work. They won’t work because either people won’t believe it, or brands won’t allow it.  The examples are easy to find:

The agency working for Chrysler publishes a tweet questioning the driving ability of motorists in Detroit and does so with some off-color language. Was that ‘real’? Yeah, that was about as real as it gets. Unfiltered, honest, direct. The result? The agency was let go. A discussion about the quality of drivers in its home town was something Chrysler wanted no part of. They even removed the tweet. Erasing history, that doesn’t sound very authentic to me.

But maybe you think ‘authenticity’ means speaking with the brand voice. Ok, I can buy that, but most brands think that means ‘being conversational.’ They water things down so much that different brands within the same category become indistinguishable.  Take a look at the casual dining category. The ones that do stand out are often the result of a carefully created persona constructed by the brand’s agency, or they are actually the authentic voice of an individual employee (Scott Monty of Ford).

This TED Talk from Joseph Pine does a great job of explaining the paradox of authenticity. Around the seven minute mark he really starts breaking it down.

Now I want you to think about Sh*t My Dad Says or BadBanana or BP Public Relations. All play with the notion of what is authentic, real or fake. Not only are all incredibly popular – spawning TV shows, books and T-shirts – but people don’t seem to have any issues with their lack of authenticity. Are people upset that BadBanana’s avatar is in fact David Ogilvy?

The Authenticity Matrix

Ultimately the zero sum game of authentic v. inauthentic is too narrow to encompass all the different ways one can engage with people via social media. Rather, it’s more as a quandrant-like matrix. Made up of the Real-Real, Fake-Real, Real-Fake, and Fake-Fake. What do these four categories look like?:

1. The Real-Real

This is perhaps the toughest to pull off for many of the reasons stated above. I think the “brand” that does it best on Twitter is Seth Godin. Seth doesn’t particularly believe in using Twitter, he prefers to communicate with people across other platforms and does so in a very authentic manner. I’ve met him personally and exchanged emails with him on more than one occasion and you always get the full Seth Godin experience. But rather than try to fake that on Twitter, Seth simply posts one tweet a day, a link to that day’s blog post. Nothing more – he’s not pushing his books or replying or retweeting; nothing less – you know you are going to get one tweet every day. That’s a real-real experience. Seth is being true to himself and to the people he connects with.

2. The Fake-Real

This is where things can, and should, get interesting. The original master of the Fake-Real, as pointed out in Pine’s video, was Disney. Their theme parks create an inauthentic universe that is so rich it seems real. J.K. Rowling is the modern master with her Harry Potter series. In social media we see this come to life with the Mad Men on Twitter experience, that featured a wide range of talented, creative individuals like Paul Isakson and Bud Caddell. Fictional characters created today but living in the 1960s using Twitter, a medium that didn’t exist at the time. Tough to see that as “authentic,” yet none of the thousands upon thousands of people who followed the story complained that this was phony. They loved it, and many joined in to help make the fake more real by introducing real life characters from the time period into the story. A fake so well done that it feels real can be very effective. This is different from trying to deceive people. A brand trying to pass off tweets as coming from the CEO when they are written by a marketing department isn’t creating a Fake-Real, they are just frauds.

The Authenticity Matrix

3. The Real-Fake

Playing with the artificiality of media is a long-standing practice. Remember the intro song to the Garry Shandling Show?

This same artificiality, this nod and wink to the audience, has been pulled off brilliantly in social media by Old Spice. No need to show examples, you’ve seen them all, but think about what they’ve done. They constantly play with the notion of authenticity. Where is he? Who is he? Where does the commercial start and end? By pulling back the curtain, Old Spice (or rather Wieden + Kennedy) acknowledge the inauthenticity of the whole campaign. By contrast, an equally compelling character, Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man in the World, tries to maintain the Fake-Real by not acknowledging the actor’s name or providing behind the scenes footage. Andrew Teman notes the different approaches here. To what degree did Old Spice’s acknowledgement of the Real-Fake contribute to the campaign’s longevity?

4. The Fake-Fake

This last category is difficult to pull off. I’ve written about my disagreement with those running the SXSW panel on brand mascots in the digital age. To me, a character like Tony the Tiger would be a Fake-Fake. If the character was anything beyond a corporate shill it would be disingenuous to the brand because that’s what he was created to be. Furthermore, any interaction with a consumer beyond pushing the product would seem false to a consumer. Another example is that of P.J. Bland’s. To showcase how tasty their menu is, Chili’s created a fake restaurant chain called P.J. Bland’s that served cardboard. Clever. But then they tried to take it to social media. Not clever. More than 1,000 tweets in three months netted them just 1,200 followers. Who knows how many of those are just bots that started following long after the account went dormant? P.J. Bland’s didn’t work because it was a Fake-Fake. I called them on this early (see post here), and in the same post I called out T.G.I. Friday’s for their Fake-Fake fan Woody program which didn’t turn out too hot either.

The Takeaway

Ultimately we need to understand that in an age of Lady Gaga and recombinance ‘authenticity’ has lost much of its meaning or at least that it has multiple meanings, and that people are not always looking for some idealized truth. They are looking for an experience that can take many forms. In some cases it could be conversational or an interaction with an actual employee, but just as easily it can be a fictional experience – one that creates a new world while acknowledging that is indeed creating a fictional experience.

The problem with making claims for authenticity is that brands are interested in it in theory far more than in practice. The sooner they stop pretending that authenticity is what they want to deliver – and what people want to receive – the sooner they can create experiences that are truly engaging.  Have you ever thought to yourself, or heard someone say, “I really want to have an authentic relationship with a soda company.”?

Tags: authenticity in social media, fake social media, genuine fake