Okay, so no one can totally recession-proof anything, but I’ve been thinking about some simple things you can do with and for your brand during down markets, when the temptation is to cut costs, slash prices, eliminate staff, lower service levels, change who you are and very possibly alienate customers (so that when the economy turns around – which it will- they’ll have moved on). I’ve been thinking about five opportunities: (Read on …)
Who cannot place their hand on their heart and say that what consumers really want is authenticity? I can’t.
With sincerest apologies to the burgeoning authenticity industry, as documented in Gilmore and Pine’s What Consumers Really Want: Authenticity (and just about every bibliographic reference in it), what is mistaken as an appetite for authenticity is actually a desire for escape, denial, disguise, control and temporary or permanent identity shift. How can Gilmore, Pine and others claim that consumers want authenticity when even they agree that our world gets less real every day? Harley Davidson? Häagen-Dazs? Las Vegas? Plastic surgery? Reality television? Reality television about plastic surgery? Low calorie brownies? Designer knock-offs? Spas? Wrestling? PT Cruisers?
Maybe you can twist all this into some theory about real-fake, fake-fake and fake-real offerings (as Gilmore and Pike attempt), but the fact is, there is no mass market for the truly authentic in any category. Travel, food, clothing, health, entertainment, recreation, consumer goods, personal services, luxury and so on. There is craft, the quaint, home-made and farm stands, but not much else.
This is not to say that people want to be out-and-out lied to. The terms of the transaction have to be honest and the promises have to be kept, but the provider who can suspend my disbelief the longest, wins. We don’t want to be fooled, but we don’t mind fooling ourselves. Give me the perception of authenticity – no matter how un-real – and I’m yours.
And what is the quickest way to give the perception of authenticity? It is with story-telling, or as the ferociously authentic (skeptical empiricist) Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls it: the narrative fallacy – creating a story post-hoc so that an event will seem to have a cause. His words are meant to apply to our inability to accept randomness of events, but they describe as well the roots of our collective desire for the inauthentic.
“We love the tangible, the confirmation, the palpable, the real, the visible, the concrete, the known, the seen, the vivid, the visual, the social, the embedded, the emotional laden, the salient, the stereotypical, the moving, the theatrical, the romanced, the cosmetic, the official, the scholarly-sounding verbiage (b******t), the pompous Gaussian economist, the mathematicized crap, the pomp, the Academie Francaise, Harvard Business School, the Nobel Prize, dark business suits with white shirts and Ferragamo ties, the moving discourse, and the lurid. Most of all we favor the narrated.”
Okay he sounds bitter, but he is right. People want to be lulled to sleep with bedtime stories. We want to be one step removed from reality because reality is too much work, and too scary. This is why the average American watches 32 hours of television every week. Is there ANYTHING authentic about watching television?
Just because people buy products, services and experiences that are labelled genuine, real, original, authentic, the first, true, classic etc. does not mean they value those qualities; they just want the label and the back story to connect it to some cognitive trigger that will make them feel better about themselves.
If I sound angry, it’s because I am. The flagging demand for things and experiences that are actually authentic means you have to drive farther, go deeper and work a lot harder to find the simple, the original, the unpaved, the un-story-boarded, the real deal; and then once you find it, you’ve worked so hard for it that is doesn’t seem authentic any more. The commercial world is being turned into a story line and the non-commercial world is following close behind.
Maybe this is why I like to work in settings where fake doesn’t rule (yet), like professional services, education, health care, B2B, manufacturing, utilities, transportation, telecom etc.
The horribly cynical implication from Gilmore and Pine is this: to succeed, create the perception of authenticity. Are they right? Or is there hope for real?
When it comes to competitive brand strategy you can be right in a lot of ways, but you can be really, really wrong in just two: 1) believing that there is no one out there like you and so you own your category and have no direct competition or 2) that you operate in a commoditized category and you’ll never be able to truly differentiate, so why bother. I hear both all the time – and shockingly – sometimes from within the same organization.
Regarding the former, no matter how unique, one-of-a-kind, quirky or pioneering you are, there is always something else that your customers can do with their money, their time and their affection. There are pure plays that eat away at your offer, giants for whom what you do is a rounding error and lots of competitors who will say they do what you do, but don’t. Heads up. Someone is eating your lunch; I guarantee it.
Regarding the latter, I need only quote the father of differentiation, Ted Levitt: “There is no such thing as a commodity. All goods and services can be differentiated and usually are.” (I always thought this would have been far more interesting if he had said …can be differentiated but usually are not). I don’t care if you run a hospital, a law firm, a country, a postal authority or a foodbank, you either already are different and may have lost sight of it, or you need to be. In fact I believe the biggest, most break-out opportunities in brand strategy are in the most highly commoditized categories. It’s shooting fish in a barrel. And I’m not talking about spin here. I’m talking about real, sustainable, valuable difference. Too often I encounter organizations with the potential to redefine their categories, lulled into believing that they are just along for the ride.
If you believe either of these things about your organization it is time to examine the consequences, and consider the alternatives. If you do, you may be able to define an totally new opportunity space and a renewed sense of purpose.