Authenticity: Building a Brand in an Insincere Age

by Mark Toft, Jay Sunny, Rich Taylor

Overview

Brands are alienating customers by telling the wrong story and championing a false purpose. Your business can avoid the same fate, attract loyal customers, and out-narrate the competition by embracing authenticity. Equal parts provocation and exhortation, the insights of Authenticity apply to business, marketing, and life in general.

Too many companies depend on marketing tactics that don't match the needs and concerns of their customers or embrace messaging and causes that don't connect. Authenticity is an anti-gimmick business book. It prescribes clear strategies that enable companies to communicate in a more genuine, emotional way.

Authors Mark Toft, Jay Sunny, and Rich Taylor provide a series of approaches to help embrace and communicate the purpose of your brand with effectiveness. Whether you're a business executive who wants to be more persuasive or an advertising professional looking to grow your brand, this book combines the authors' successful experiences at top agencies into practical advice that can work for anyone in any business.

Readers will learn the importance of purpose and conflict in marketing activities, how to approach advertising with clarity and passion, and how to plan content while avoiding the false allure of aspirational advertising and insincere corporate social responsibility. Inauthentic messaging can often spell failure for a business, but the company that tells a genuine, compelling story to its clients is the one that succeeds.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440873201
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/07/2020
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.55(h) x 0.95(d)

About the Author

Mark Toft, chief strategy officer and cofounder of the Narrator Group, was lead digital writer for the Staples Easy Button.

Jay Sunny, chief creative officer and cofounder of the Narrator Group, spent seven years as an art director at the two top advertising agencies in Switzerland.

Rich Taylor, senior vice president of the Narrator Group, is a marketing and sales leader with experience in planning, developing, and implementing successful marketing campaigns.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

This is not an introduction xi

Part I Setting the Stage

1 The best definitions of branding and advertising you'll find 3

2 What we mean by authenticity 5

Part II Why Authenticity

3 Because it's what we need and resist most 11

4 Because branding and advertising are ready for an authenticity revolution 14

5 Because the survival of your business depends on it 18

Part III What Authenticity Requires

6 Authenticity requires purpose 23

7 What your brand's purpose is not 24

8 Find your hill and defend it 26

9 What's your exploding scoreboard? 28

10 Understand your audience 31

11 Name the problem and how you solve it 33

12 Seek conflict 34

13 Creation over disruption 35

14 Put yourself in the shoes of your customer and ask, "So what?" 37

15 Use it or lose it 38

16 Remember, people would rather like than hate you 39

17 Know your role, and don't try to be the hero 40

18 You can't succeed without emotion 42

19 Being emotional doesn't mean being saccharine 45

20 Authenticity requires avoiding business jargon 46

Part IV Fixing an Inauthentic Brand

21 Consider the new reality about how people make decisions 51

22 Cause with caution 52

23 Remember, a company without a story is a company without a strategy 54

24 Be honest about whether your current brand story is boring 55

25 Trim the fat 57

26 Kill your darlings 58

27 Don't try to be funny 60

28 Nobody ever played air guitar to a logo 63

29 This is not a generic brand video 64

30 There's beauty in simplicity 66

31 Speaking of beauty… 68

32 There is no such thing as speed farming or abracadabra marketing 70

33 What Frank Lloyd Wright can teach us about branding 72

34 Play to the audience, not the amps (or, what the Ramones can teach us about branding) 73

Part V Breaking Bad Habits, Building Better Ones

35 Take a chance on your customers 79

36 Beware the fool's gold of easy brilliance 80

37 Create hot, edit cold 81

38 It's an act of daring to be sincere 82

39 Authenticity and memorability 83

40 Consider why your dog stares at you when he poops 85

41 Know the proper role of research 87

42 Know your "80 years young" boundaries 88

43 Avoid these words 90

44 Avoid inauthenticity in photos and imagery 92

45 Get your white tuxedo dirty 93

46 Don't fall in love with celebrities 95

47 Don't spill your candy in the lobby 97

48 A loud voice can make even the truth sound foolish 99

49 Don't get that person. Be that person. 101

50 Shut up, he explained 102

51 Maybe people don't want to join your conversation 103

52 Say yes to criticism, no to condemnation 104

Part VI Select Profiles in Authenticity

53 The customer experience paradox 109

54 The non-flashy warehouse club 109

55 HBO and authentic brand evolution 111

56 LEGO: Saved by loyal customers 112

57 The surprise and delight of Zappos 113

58 Airbnb and the importance of not giving up 115

59 CrossFit and the art of staying out of the way 116

Part VII Profiles That Show the Perils of Insincerity

60 Spotting an insincere brand 121

61 BOA, the bank opposed to authenticity 122

62 Segway, the overhyped machine 123

63 McDonald's, not exactly lovin' it 125

64 United Airlines and the abandonment of purpose 127

65 Sears and a brand magic that was lost in transition 129

66 Facebook fakery 131

67 Saturn, god of both wealth and dissolution 133

68 Monsanto, where lawyers control the message 135

Part VIII Using Media Authentically

69 The medium is a message, not the message 139

70 Media 101 140

71 Media and authenticity 143

72 Media by the numbers 145

73 Media traps to avoid 147

74 Media and your message 151

Part IX Assessment Tools

75 A general guide for assessing marketing ideas 157

76 Grading the authenticity of your marketing 158

77 Your authenticity checklist/gut check 162

78 An abridged Story Workshop® 164

79 Watch out for tactical tricks 166

Part X Closing Thoughts

80 The moral of the story 171

81 Share your story with us 173

Thank You 175

Notes 177

Index 187

About the Authors 197

What People are Saying About This

Stephen Smith

"There are so many books and articles out there about branding, you can easily suffer from paralysis by analysis. Thankfully, Authenticity goes right to the core of branding—the perception of a brand’s mission and credibility. It will positively impact your business, and you as well."

Hans Tung

“I’ve seen people with good ideas fail because they can’t tell a good story. This book will help you sharpen the way you think about and pitch your products or services. Authenticity saves you from the biggest traps and gives you memorable ideas on how to position your brand.”

Christopher Miller

"Most business books function best as sleeping pills. Not Authenticity. The examples and anecdotes the authors provide are actually entertaining.”

Sven Kahler

“This is an entertaining book. More importantly, it’s a necessary book. Business, marketing—the entire culture—needs the lessons and wisdom contained in these pages.”

Editorial Reviews

Recommended. All readers.” —Choice

From the Publisher