Authenticity vs Transparency.
A common error I see online is the conflation of authenticity and transparency. In general, if I see someone using the two terms interchangeably, I assume they don’t understand either concept.
Transparency is a lack of obfuscation. To be transparent is to make information publicly available, to a significant (but not complete) degree.
Authenticity, as I define it, is predictability mixed with honesty. “Authentic” actions are those which wouldn’t surprise a fairly familiar observer, while “inauthentic” ones fall outside of the persona projected on the actor by outsiders.
Authenticity is a judgement based on assumptions without complete information, regardless of how popular a buzzword it has become. Transparency is an attempt to avoid mistaken assumptions, by providing enough information that people will understand your actions and motives.
This post owes a debt of inspiration to The Authenticity Hoax, which I finally hunkered down and read this weekend while cottaging. Highly recommended.
Scribbles.
I love it when a campaign takes the shape of a documentary. When I see a commercial or video that is expanding on, explaining, or celebrating an action, rather than just an idea or an association, it tells me something meaningful about what a brand stands for.
My mother always told me that change and growth are shown, not told.
This doesn’t just mean campaigns focused on social responsibility, or the narrative of a specific spokesperson. Show me what you do, and make me care about that. What you do, not who you are or how you want to be interpreted.
The easiest narrative to create is one that is focused on practices, on actions, rather than on associations. And in the current, authenticity-obsessed environment, an action-focused narrative confers a sense of honesty and ‘realness’ that is hard to achieve with even the most well-produced montage of sports heroes being victorious, or attractive young people looking cool.
For years the hollow claims of every marketing guru who insists that consumers ‘demand authenticity’ has been neatly debunked by the success of the high-end ‘distressed’ denim phenomenon. Buying jeans whose wear-and-tear is implemented by far-flung factory workers and machinery, according to specific standards devised and overseen by layers of corporate design-management — and in fact paying extra for such jeans, and pretending that this somehow signals rebel style — a capitulation to simulacra-culture so Xtreme it would make Debord giggle and Baudrillard weep
Rob Walker on faux-distressing and the Olympic snowboarding uniforms. (via putthison)
Authenticity is a BS codeword for accepted and expected behaviours. Authenticity is when someone you think you know, does what you think they would do in a given situation.
Question authenticity.
