OPEN

While we’re on the subject of sounding like you mean it, by actually meaning it…

…I loved Matthew Parris’s column in The Times on authenticity yesterday.

I’ll start with his ending:

I would suggest to the BBC, to the House of Lords Appointments Committee and to David Cameron’s Conservative campaign, three key and neglected priorities for our age: authenticity, authenticity, authenticity. Except, of course, that to make it a marketing slogan would rob it of the very thing it claims.

I like Matthew Parris’s writing a lot. If the Timesonline’s RSS feeds were easier to work out I’d have subscribed to him by now.

As it is I happen across his column when I’m on holiday and read a paper-based newspaper or when, as was the case today, I go “surfing” in an aimless way across major media websites.

Anyhow, back to the column in question…

Like plants whose presence marks the vein of a particular mineral in the soil beneath, a clutch of fashionable words and phrases alerts us to a lurking, growing problem with authenticity. They are all words about presentation and perception. They come from the worlds of marketing, of fame and of entertainment. They include “virtual”, “brand” and “rebranding”; “message”, “narrative”, “signpost” and “beacon”; “reputation-management”, “profile”, “target”; and (of course) “story”.

Each of them in its way offers the same hint: that appearance is the new reality; that what a thing is, is becoming secondary to how a thing seems….

I’m a – sort of – marketer and use some of those words, so my guard is up when I read those words. My cheeks are flushed. Does that mean me? Actually, authentic isn’t a word I use a huge amount, as it goes…

In fact, I sometimes feel uncomfortable when the word is used. It’s been bandied a fair bit over the past couple of years – enough for buzzword merchants to pick up on its use. I believe in what it means to me, but I fret about its over-use and mis-use and – frankly – when I hear it it puts me on guard about the user’s real motives.  

 I read on…

Understand that the lie is sophisticated. If the Devil came among us in the shape of a marketing consultant, he would not say to his client: “The product doesn’t matter”. He would say: “Of course the product matters hugely; but however good the product, the first thing to get right is how your potential customer sees it before deciding whether to buy – or how he feels about what he’s bought.”

It’s a great article, and a warning to all of us rethinking how marketing can be better by helping brands and organisations to be better rather than just look better. It shines a light on how easily a powerful, wonderful force for change can be twisted by old-style spinners, how the meaning can be wrung out of it and it can end up a used old lie, no better than the old lies of marketing.

Pay close attention to the words of clients and colleagues for the moment that “authenticity” begins to be used with a subliminal nudge and a wink, a dog-whistle word for pulling the wool over the eyes of the newly empowered “consumer” who we can coddle into thinking that they are in charge now.

And fight it.

Don’t let them get away with it. Remind them what the word really means. Remind them what openness, honesty, engagement, listening, responsibility really mean too, while you’re at it.

Nice that Mr Parris ends with a nod to a political blog that’s getting it right:

The website ConservativeHome is a dubious friend to David Cameron, but its Editor’s Diary advice to him this week after the Ealing Southall result – that it’s all about authenticity – is spot-on. We respect the Lords less because we know that despite appearances there are real peers and fake peers, and all peers ought to worry about that. I never trust what I see on TV because I know how TV is made. I am not alone.