I had a slight backlog on my TED videocasts and I went through a few them today. One of the videos I watched was Joseph Pine’s 2004 TED talk. This was before he had published the book Authenticity with Jim Gilmore, but this presentation is pretty much on the same stuff that’s being talked about in the book.
The book is essentially about authenticity becoming our (the consumers) primary buying sensitivity. First goods, then services, and now even experiences have become commoditized, so marketers have no choice but to offer authentic experiences. Or at least sell their experiences as more authentic as the competitors’. I had blogged about the book when it came out and I was going to revisit the subject at some point, but I never got around to it. But this is a good reason as any to revisit the subject.
One of the main tenets that stuck with me with the book was this little 2×2 diagram that Pine also had in his TED talk. It’s a screencap, so apologies for the quality.
The diagram has two axis: “it is what it says it is” and “it is true to itself”. What they mean is best illustrated via examples. The “Fake Fake” is rather self-explanatory, but for “Real Fake” Pine says that a tour at Universal Studios is a good example of this: it is real and it is what it says it is (being in Hollywood and a real studio), but it’s fake in the sense that it’s not really “true” to Hollywood because it offers a view behind the scenes, removing the veil of mystery behind Hollywood films. With “Fake Real” Pine says that Disneyworld is the perfect example: it’s not what it says it is – “It’s not a magic kingdom”, as Pine says – but it’s wonderfully true to itself in the sense that the experience is so wonderfully immersive and passionate, that it really captures the feeling of “magic kingdom”.
Which brings us to “Real Real”. When I was watching the TED talk it hit me that for cultural brands, of course, the goal is to embody both categories of “real”: they are both what they say they are and they are true to their selves. The “Real Real” distinction is a new way to conceptualize and complement Douglas Holt’s distinctions of brand literacy and brand fidelity.
Holt says that brand’s should demonstrate an understanding of its supporting demographic’s “populist world” and its custom’s and idioms (literacy). The brand should also understand its place in this populist world and play to it (like Harley does to biker culture and Apple to the creative industries). This is where the “it is what it says it is” comes to play: a brand must neither overstate nor deny its place in the populist world. Examples of brands trying to claim a stake in a subculture and failing are too numerous to list (especially brands trying to ride the hip hop craze in the late 90s), but the shoe brand Timberland tried to do the opposite, it tried to deny its place as a hip hop icon and suffered for it. As for brand fidelity, Holt argues that brands should honor their roots and sacrifice pandering to the masses by thinking populist world first. I think this can be seen as “staying true to itself” in many ways.
In short: brands should first understand what they are and what they mean to a given populist world (build brand literacy) so that they can “be what they say they are”. If no such links to relevant subcultures exist, then a brand should look to build and nurture meanings that have the potential to become such connections. Once the brand understands itself and its place, it should look to nurture this connection (show brand fidelity/be true to itself) and not alienate its core constituency as the brand grows in popularity.
Easier said than done, though.
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