Inauthenticity. Human senses are wired to sniff it out. We pick up subtle cues in non-verbal gestures. Entire fields of expertise have developed to study nonverbal communications.
We make note of eye contact, or lack thereof (known as oculesics). We know when smiles are artificial from movement of facial muscles (known as kinesics). We can sense undercurrents of real emotion in voices (paralanguage or vocalics).
All of these are subtle indicators that, taken together, enable us to judge reasonably accurately whether something (or somebody) is fishy or truly authentic.
Click Image to Enlarge | Consumer expectations of authenticity are increasing; marketers who don’t keep up risk consumer punishment.
When it comes to marketing communications, consumers seem willing to tolerate moderate authenticity—the middle in the distribution at left. After all, we as consumers expect some level of artificiality from advertising, as with movies or TV shows. But, consumers duly reward or punish communications in the tails of the authenticity curve.
Focus on the Zone of Reward in the right tail of the authenticity curve. You see this kind of authenticity in Burger King’s Whopper Freakout ads—you don’t need a subtitle to tell you those are real people’s reactions. As a result, these ads are subtly more powerful for consumers, and they reward Burger King for that.
Likewise, Ford’s CMO, Jim Farley, is a master in engineering authentic communications. Ford is using testimonials in some of its upcoming advertising. These are real people talking about what’s cool about their Ford. If you look across Ford’s communications since Farley arrived, you see this thread of authenticity running throughout, especially with its social media efforts (see www.Fiestamovement.com).
In an increasingly social world, where consumers come to rely more on authentic word-of-mouth, it seems likely that the zone of acceptable authenticity will shift right. Consumers will raise the bar on what is minimally acceptable, and they will be stingier in rewarding brands for deep authenticity. In my next post, I’ll dive in to describe how marketers should think about working differently with agency partners to drive the kind of deep authenticity that consumers reward.
MLC Members: Learn more about how Ford integrates its marketing and PR efforts around social media by listening to the replay of the teleconference with Ray Day, VP of Communications at Ford.
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on 3 December 09
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Thanks for writing about this topic. I was wondering if it was just my technology customers.
on 7 December 09
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[...] partners, the oculesics, paralanguage and vocalics of the target audience come naturally (see my last post if this is Greek to [...]