Are you Real or Fake?

Consumers have turned on us.  They've changed.  9 out of 10 consumers don’t trust advertisers anymore.  Now, that’s not all our fault.  We didn’t create this situation.  Or, rather, we didn’t create this situation…alone.  There are a lot of other institutions and individuals that played their hands to get us here.  As Pines and Gilmore say in “Authenticity” – the opposite of quality used to be junk.  Now it’s fake.  Consumers been faked out, lied to, misled, and generally betrayed an awful lot.

And what is advertising if not “fake”?  How many of you say to your kids – sweetie, that’s not the show, that’s the commercials, you don’t need to watch that.  Fast forward.   Our industry creates advertorial, which we design specifically to make our stuff look like the real stuff.  

How can we ever hope to succeed if consumers look at us - when they do look at us - as false?  And how will you make your brand real?  When we talk about brand authenticity these days, we need to think about everything a brand says and does, and even how they say it.

Get real.  Now.