How do you measure authenticity?

There once was a sim­pler time when a brand’s suc­cess could eas­i­ly be mea­sured. The bet­ter its offer­ing, the more loy­al cus­tomers it could attract and the more sales rev­enue it could earn. But con­sumers now want some­thing from brands that’s far less tan­gi­ble: authen­tic­i­ty. 

A sur­vey of 2,000 adults in the UK, Aus­tralia and the US by IT com­pa­ny Stack­la in 2019 found that 86% con­sid­ered a brand’s authen­tic­i­ty to be impor­tant when decid­ing whether to sup­port it or not. A fifth of respon­dents said that they had unfol­lowed at least one brand on social media because they felt that the con­tent it was pro­duc­ing was too cor­po­rate or insin­cere.

Authen­tic­i­ty mat­ters even more to younger peo­ple. Accord­ing to a poll con­duct­ed last year for blog soft­ware provider WP Engine, 72% of under-25s said that they would be more like­ly to buy from a brand that con­tributes to good caus­es. What’s more, con­sumers can eas­i­ly see through firms that treat char­i­ta­ble dona­tions as a proxy for tru­ly social­ly con­scious behav­iour. 

There are more ways than ever to expose com­pa­nies whose actions don’t match their rhetoric. In May 2020, for instance, the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment thrust brands that weren’t anti-racist into the spot­light. After the mur­der of George Floyd, com­pa­nies scram­bled to pub­lish social media con­tent express­ing sup­port for the cam­paign to end police bru­tal­i­ty against Black peo­ple (see pan­el, oppo­site page). But for­mer employ­ees and cus­tomers high­light­ed the hypocrisy of sev­er­al of these firms, blow­ing the whis­tle on the racial dis­crim­i­na­tion occur­ring behind the scenes.

And in June, des­ig­nat­ed as Pride Month in the US, many com­pa­nies that pro­claimed their sup­port for LGBTQ+ rights were accused of cyn­i­cal band­wag­on-jump­ing or ‘pinkwash­ing’, giv­en their poor inclu­siv­i­ty records. A 2018 sur­vey by PR giant Edel­man found that “64% of con­sumers would reward firms which they see as engaged in some kind of activism”. It’s there­fore unsur­pris­ing that busi­ness­es would vocal­ly back a wor­thy cause if they believe that it would gen­er­ate more cus­tom. The chal­lenge they need to address is how to stand for some­thing in a way that the lat­est gen­er­a­tion of dis­cern­ing con­sumers deems com­mend­able. 

Ulti­mate­ly, a com­pa­ny can­not say one thing and do anoth­er. This isn’t a ‘fake it till you make it’ sce­nario

It’s not rock­et sci­ence, accord­ing to Shayne Tilley, mar­ket­ing direc­tor at cre­ative plat­form 99designs. “Ulti­mate­ly, a com­pa­ny can­not say one thing and do anoth­er. This isn’t a ‘fake it till you make it’ sce­nario – the world is get­ting smarter than that,” he says. “A brand’s per­son­al­i­ty is a con­duit of its val­ues, which have to be ground­ed in real­i­ty if that brand is to stand a chance of being authen­tic. Emp­ty ges­tures will – and should – be called out.”

Ryan Foland is a brand con­sul­tant and co-author of Ditch the Act: reveal the sur­pris­ing pow­er of the real you for greater suc­cess. He notes that “authen­tic­i­ty, like trust, is built over time. This hap­pens when the brand’s mis­sion, vision, val­ues and goals are per­son­i­fied in the dai­ly inter­ac­tions of its employ­ees, with each oth­er and with sup­pli­ers, ven­dors and cus­tomers.” 

Foland advis­es com­pa­nies to iden­ti­fy and agree what val­ues they stand for and then ensure that every­one in the organ­i­sa­tion lives up to these con­sis­tent­ly. “Brands can’t avoid how oth­ers inter­pret their words, but they can back up their words with actions,” he says. 

When social caus­es that match the company’s val­ues are clear­ly defined and com­mu­ni­cat­ed – and then, cru­cial­ly, sup­port­ed at all lev­els of the organ­i­sa­tion – what the firm says pub­licly about these caus­es should be seen as con­sis­tent with its behav­iour, accord­ing to Foland. He adds that brands would be well advised to say noth­ing about a cause until they’re able to show that their actions sup­port it.

A key issue that’s impor­tant to con­sumers of all ages is sus­tain­abil­i­ty. A company’s envi­ron­men­tal impact on the world is rel­a­tive­ly easy to gauge. If a fast-fash­ion retail­er were to urge its cus­tomers to stop using plas­tic straws, for instance, that would demon­stra­bly be the height of hypocrisy. 

US out­door cloth­ing brand Patag­o­nia tops the authen­tic­i­ty chart for experts and con­sumers alike. It calls itself an activist com­pa­ny, hav­ing com­mit­ted to min­imis­ing its envi­ron­men­tal foot­print and donat­ing 1% of its sales income to green caus­es since 1985 – long before such behav­iour was pop­u­lar with con­sumers or par­tic­u­lar­ly prof­itable.

In 2016, Patag­o­nia con­tributed all of its Black Fri­day rev­enue – about $10m (£7.2m) to envi­ron­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions, off­set­ting some of the waste asso­ci­at­ed with the busiest shop­ping day of the year in the US. Two years lat­er, it made head­lines again for donat­ing the $10m it had received from the Trump administration’s tax cuts to “groups com­mit­ted to pro­tect­ing air, land and water, and to find­ing solu­tions to the cli­mate cri­sis”. 

For Becky Willan, co-founder and CEO of Giv­en, an agency that works with pur­pose-dri­ven busi­ness­es, Patag­o­nia is a touch­stone. She con­sid­ers the ‘Don’t buy this jack­et’ advert that it ran in the New York Times on Black Fri­day in 2011, which urged read­ers to shun mass con­sumerism, “a mas­ter­class in authen­tic brand-build­ing”.

Willan cites anoth­er US trail­blaz­er, Ben & Jerry’s, for its long his­to­ry of cham­pi­oning equal­i­ty. While oth­er firms were being cas­ti­gat­ed for pay­ing lip ser­vice to Black Lives Mat­ter, the Unilever-owned ice-cream brand post­ed a state­ment on its web­site detail­ing the activ­i­ties it was under­tak­ing in sup­port of its com­mit­ment to uphold­ing pro­gres­sive val­ues.

Some of Ben & Jerry’s recent polit­i­cal activ­i­ties around the world have inevitably been divi­sive, but it has stood firm against the crit­ics. For instance, it took to Twit­ter to chal­lenge the UK home secretary’s oppo­si­tion to migrants cross­ing the Eng­lish Chan­nel to seek asy­lum last year, declar­ing that “peo­ple can­not be ille­gal”.

Willan adds that the brand (whose founders are both Jew­ish) has also since tak­en a bold stance against the Israeli gov­ern­ment by with­draw­ing its prod­ucts from sale in Israeli set­tle­ments in Occu­pied Pales­tin­ian Ter­ri­to­ry. 

She believes that any brand seek­ing cred­i­bil­i­ty “must have a pur­pose beyond mak­ing mon­ey. It needs to have a clear idea about the role it plays in people’s lives and act in a way that’s con­sis­tent with that idea. It has to be true to the prin­ci­ples it stands for.” 

There’s nev­er been a bet­ter time for brands to pur­sue authen­tic­i­ty, accord­ing to Willan, although she stress­es that they must not treat it as a mere mar­ket­ing tac­tic. 

“This is about pri­ori­tis­ing actions over words, not about adopt­ing a mantra that makes every­one feel good while they car­ry on with busi­ness as usu­al. It’s about liv­ing up to a pur­pose com­pre­hen­sive­ly in every part of the busi­ness,” she says, describ­ing any­thing less as “pur­pose-wash­ing”.

Willan believes that “every busi­ness on the plan­et should be think­ing about how they are con­tribut­ing to a more sus­tain­able, equi­table and inclu­sive world. The chal­lenge is that, for firms in cer­tain sec­tors – includ­ing defence, tobac­co and gam­bling – it’s vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble for their activ­i­ties to cre­ate gen­uine­ly pos­i­tive out­comes for soci­ety.” 

Michael Houli­han, the co-founder and for­mer CEO of California’s Bare­foot Wines, agrees. “The big­ger issue con­cerns the dis­clo­sure of any unde­sir­able facts about your approach to sourc­ing, pro­duc­tion, labour and human rights. Authen­tic­i­ty demands a clean slate, so banks, for instance, tend to play down the envi­ron­men­tal effects of their invest­ments in the fos­sil-fuel indus­try,” he says.

B Cor­po­ra­tion sta­tus is some­thing that tru­ly respon­si­ble com­pa­nies val­ue as a badge of hon­our. To attain it, a firm must under­go a rig­or­ous assess­ment process that mea­sures its per­for­mance in five cat­e­gories: gov­er­nance, work­ers, cus­tomers, com­mu­ni­ty and the envi­ron­ment. 

While Willan encour­ages brands to seek such accred­i­ta­tion, she urges CEOs to first “think holis­ti­cal­ly about the role they play in the world before they dream up a pur­pose-dri­ven mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy”. 

She believes that “cam­paign activ­i­ty needs to be backed by real and stretch­ing busi­ness com­mit­ments”. Invest­ment must be focused on deliv­er­ing pos­i­tive change, rather than on telling every­one about it, while “mem­bers of any mar­gin­alised group that a firm is sup­port­ing need to be involved in its cam­paigns. And cam­paign activ­i­ties must be backed by long-term pro­grammes focused on chang­ing the whole sys­tem.” 

Willan acknowl­edges that doing all those things is hard­er and more com­plex than sim­ply pay­ing for a slick advert, but they will cer­tain­ly pay off in the longer term.

Erik Ober­holtzer, the co-founder and exec­u­tive chair­man of the LA-based Ten­der Greens restau­rant group, is also an advis­er to social­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious food brands via his cre­ative agency, Cohere. Anoth­er fan of Patagonia’s approach, he believes that the recipe for authen­tic­i­ty is sim­ple: it’s that a brand’s stat­ed val­ues align with its behav­iour – and that those val­ues are ground­ed in “an unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment and core belief sys­tem that comes from with­in”. 

Ober­holtzer encour­ages con­sumers to con­sid­er the dis­tance between what a brand says and what its actions indi­cate – for instance, BP’s ‘Beyond Petro­le­um’ rebrand­ing as a sup­pli­er of green ener­gy ver­sus its con­duct after the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon oil spill in the Gulf of Mex­i­co. 

He agrees with Ryan Foland that brands should refrain from com­ment­ing about caus­es to which they have no estab­lished con­nec­tion. 

“I find it inau­then­tic when brands paste a rain­bow flag on their web­site dur­ing Pride Month, or post a Black Lives Mat­ter stamp on their social media accounts after an upris­ing, if they have lit­tle his­to­ry of activism in those areas before that ‘mar­ket­ing moment’,” Ober­holtzer says.

There is no stan­dard met­ric by which to gauge authen­tic­i­ty and there isn’t (yet) an algo­rithm that can deter­mine your firm’s val­ues and ensure that every­one in the organ­i­sa­tion lives by them. That’s why it’s impor­tant to engage with only those caus­es that align with your beliefs, what your com­pa­ny is sell­ing and how it behaves. All firms should strive to be social­ly respon­si­ble, but that work starts from with­in. A mar­ket­ing cam­paign should be the last step in con­vey­ing your con­vic­tions.

Case study: skin-deep sincerity?

Glossier, a US cos­met­ics brand that’s proved par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar with younger con­sumers since its foun­da­tion near­ly 10 years ago, came under fire in 2020 for not stick­ing by its val­ues. 

Days after the mur­der of George Floyd in May, the com­pa­ny stat­ed on Insta­gram that it was stand­ing “in sol­i­dar­i­ty” with the fight against “the his­toric oppres­sion of the Black com­mu­ni­ty”. It also pledged to donate $500,000 to organ­i­sa­tions com­bat­ing racial injus­tice and the same amount to Black-owned beau­ty busi­ness­es. On the face of it, the firm was mak­ing a gen­uine and sub­stan­tial ges­ture, but a num­ber of ex-employ­ees would soon paint this in a dif­fer­ent light. 

In August, a group of for­mer work­ers at the firm’s flag­ship retail store in New York pub­lished a Medi­um post enti­tled “To Glossier: a call for account­abil­i­ty and nec­es­sary change”. They alleged that the company’s lead­er­ship was ill-equipped to “guide a diverse team through the unique stres­sors of work­ing in an expe­ri­en­tial store” and said that it couldn’t be trust­ed to “mit­i­gate the harm of inci­dents”, sev­er­al of which involved racist behav­iour by cus­tomers and col­leagues. The state­ment includ­ed a list of actions that Glossier could under­take to fos­ter an anti-racist envi­ron­ment. 

In response, Glossier apol­o­gised, pub­lish­ing its acknowl­edg­ment of the alle­ga­tions on Insta­gram and promis­ing that its post was a “plan of action”. The company’s founder and CEO, Emi­ly Weiss, also pub­lished a blog post address­ing the charges and wrote a list of planned next steps along­side an email that all for­mer staff had been sent. 

Again, the firm’s inten­tions seemed pos­i­tive, yet many peo­ple viewed its move as too lit­tle, too late. For them, Glossier had no gen­uine desire to change – it was sim­ply try­ing to save face, hav­ing been called out. That same year, many for­mer fans of the brand engaged in a boy­cott and still reg­u­lar­ly con­tact the com­pa­ny seek­ing updates about the progress of its anti-racism ini­tia­tives. 

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