The Stanford Graduate School of Business recently published an article, written by Steve Hawk, about research Professor of Organizations Glenn R. Carroll has undertaken into “the origins, advantages, perils and future of authentic branding.” Authentic branding—that is, using the claim of being authentic as a selling point—is a technique commonly used by restaurateurs, furniture-makers, beer manufacturers and others.
Carroll notes that the notion of “authenticity” as a selling point only began to gain traction in the last 20 or 30 years. He describes it as a “social construct—a cultural attribution” that only works “if others say it about you.”
Authenticity is about being fully transparent about your identity. “If you open up and start telling your story, you better make sure it’s true and that you’re actually doing what you claim you’re doing, because you’ll be found out if you lie or exaggerate.”
“Among consumers, the appeal of authenticity is stronger than almost any other attribute.” Carroll believes we’re drawn to authenticity in part because of a basic human need to “individuate ourselves and find something that’s different and more appealing to us than it is to the masses.” Complications emerge when people begin to value authenticity over quality, as his research into the beer-brewing industry demonstrates:
“[The industry] was dominated by mass-producers, but then a specialty segment of microbreweries arose and began to flourish. The truth was that Anheuser-Busch, Coors and Miller had all the beer-making expertise and technology you’d ever want; the microbreweries’ quality was, at times, questionable. But people associated the craft operation with higher quality and certainly with higher value and were willing to suspend a lot of judgment. I think that’s true for lots of products and services these days.”
The other part that is naturally alluring is what Carroll describes as “moral authenticity,” which is a “claim about the underlying values at work” designed to give consumers “a unique attachment to your product.” In other words, authenticity conveys that the owner-founder is “a person who thinks through things themselves; they’re not just accepting the script that’s been handed to them by society. They’ve worked it out themselves and they’re an authentic individual. That’s the ultimate strategic position a firm can have.”