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?

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.

Full disclosure: Jeannette is a long-time collaborator of mine, and my sister-in-law, and I was very lucky to have been able to watch and cheer from the sidelines as the ideas in Ikonica took shape. The end product - which I hope is really just the beginning of a national discourse - is a treasure.

The book - structured as a field guide, beautifully designed by Paul Hodgson and written to be read with pleasure - opens by putting Canadian brands into their historical and cultural context. The authors propose an 11-point model of what makes Canadian brands Canadian. I love this part. Communitarian, chameleon-like, sceptical, collaborative….for example. When I think of the great Canadian brands I’ve worked with, these attributes are not just accurate, they are at the heart of what has made them successful.

Then come the stories. 24 interview-based stories - some with the usual suspects (Timmies, WestJet, Roots) - but also some lovely surprises (Dynamic Funds, TIFFG, Environics, McCain Foods). All the stories come across as intimate reflections by these organizations’ leaders about what has motivated them and the values they have built and modelled in order to succeed. These stories are at times funny, moving and silly but always persuasive.

The book will not disappoint practitioners with its very tidy little model that uses Community, Culture and Commerce as filters for values-based brand strategy. It’s just such great and useful stuff.

Ikonica is not going to change what it means to be Canadian. So much of what is in this book feels like us and is reassuringly familiar. What it could change is how we see the potential of our values to change the way the world thinks about brands, about Canada and about our role in shaping modern commerce.

The world is looking for what comes next after the monolithic all-about-me phase of American-style branding. Look no further. The future of the truly global brand starts here.

http://creativeclass.typepad.com/thecreativityexchange/2008/06/whos-your-city.html

I need your help for the new Canadian edition of Who’s Your City? I’m working on for publication in early 2009. My team and I at the Prosperity Institute are working through the data and rankings, building all sorts of tables and maps for Canada and North America.

But what we really need are your stories.

Back in September of 2006, I asked for personal stories about your city, and recieved more than 200 responses many of which made it into the book. Most of which were about US cities.

Now, I’d like to ask for your stories about Canadian cities Tell me about the place you live. Why did you pick your city or region? How did you go about picking it - what was your strategy? What other kinds of places did you look at? How has that choice affected the rest of your life? Your job or career? Friends, family, or romantic interests? Fulfillment and fun? Real estate jackpots or money pits? Would you do it differently next time? What cities and regions are on your radar for the future and why? That’s it. 100 or 200 words, on any or all of those subjects. 300-500 words could be even better.

Send your stories to Patrick Adler at patrick.adler@rotman.utoronto.ca , or post them on the comment section of this entry, or do both. Together, we’ll build a reservoir of community knowledge that I hope can make the book as relevant as possible for Canadian readers.

The “Big Five” types have been proven through extensive research and testing to be highly accurate descriptors of human personality. Florida says cities have personalities too….that stem from their economic structures and inform and constrain their futures.

So, I asked myself, as someone who thinks about how organizational values and culture drive brand, do organizations have personalities too? And I don’t mean the Aacker-style brand personality profiles that all seem to run together into the same words over and over. Everyone seems to be Innovative, Caring, Bold, Assertive, Rugged. I mean deeper personalities that determine what the organization can and cannot do well. And do these personalities also stem from the organization’s economic structures and inform and constrain their futures (brands) as with cities? (more…)

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