The End of The Authenticity Era: Welcome To The Simulation

From fake news to fake endorsements and manufactured scandals - no wonder trust feels like a fuzzy, sentimental relic of the past.

And, increasingly, it can be lost in a flash. Even when the brand, the celebrity and the product are real.

Take American Eagle’s ‘Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans’ campaign. It was supposed to be a cheerful dose of preppy Americana - a wholesome boost for an accessible mid-range brand. But the internet was quick to sniff out the subtext: the pun on “genes” paired with the casting choice felt like a wink at a very specific, very whitewashed vision of American identity. Dicey at best, coded at worst.

When it emerged that the actress is a registered Republican, comment threads and thinkpieces unsurprisingly accused the brand of coded messaging and tone deafness.

With public trust itself up in the air, audiences are quicker than ever to spot the cues and call out hidden (subtly or otherwise) agendas.

It’s certainly a reminder of how quickly contrived attempts at authenticity can backfire in the post-information era. In American Eagle and Sweeney’s case, two things can be true at once - liberal backlash coexists with approval from Trump supporters (the US President called the ad “the HOTTEST out there).

The hunt for attention, coupled with a growing trend for brands to tap into society’s sobering nostalgia for simpler times (in the case of American Eagle, it appears to have picked 'Make America Great Again'), explains both the Sweeney saga and why brands are keen to connect with audiences by seeking to relate to them politically.

This controversy exemplifies how trust and authenticity are negotiated in today’s ‘post-authentic world', and how it can go wrong.

But Weber Shandwick's global chief creative officer Tom Beckman questions whether brands can even be authentic in the first place, arguing that they are simply ideals and constructs around products.

“Authenticity and branding are typically things that you cannot mix. You can talk about being authentic to the brand’s history, but the history is typically made up anyway,” he says.

But if brands aren’t the place for 'authenticity', where can it be found, if at all, and how can anyone trust a media landscape filled with misinformation and a digital world where people are increasingly deprived of real human contact? Welcome to the post-authentic world where nothing is as it seems and no one even wants it to be.

The Trust Shift: Horizontal Truths And Individual Realities

In the post-authentic world, familiar faces are valued more than respected ones - community matters, but everyone is fake.

In this landscape, despite the increasing wariness about manufactured authenticity, brands continue to garner more trust than traditional institutions.

According to Edelman’s latest Trust Barometer, 80 per cent of people trust brands more than they trust the government, media and non-governmental organisations.

Even more tellingly, the report also highlights that comparatively, trust in brands is rising. Since 2022, it has risen to 68 per cent, but trust in institutions has remained at 55 per cent.

This shift indicates a move away from a centralised 'truth' towards a more fragmented, personal, and transactional horizontal truth.

Discussing Edelman's Brand Trust Report Edelman's chief brand officer Jackie Cooper tells Creative Salon that publications and brands are increasingly expected to replace neutrality or objectivity with having a voice: "Silence is not an option; our survey showed that people feel that if you're silent, you've got something to hide, and if you're silent, consumers will make up their own narrative about you - and that's when you start to lose control of the brand."

"The ability for people to tap on their keyboard and bring you down is off the scale, and so paralysis and indecision is the default for many marketers - we want that to be challenged," she explains.

Likewise, speaking at the launch of this year's Reuters Digital News Report, digital journalist and TikTok influencer covering disinformation, Sophia Smith Galer argued that media institutions should support their journalists to become influencers in their own right to help combat misinformation while developing trust.

“It is our duty to hold power to account but that is useless if our audiences can’t see it or can’t find it in the media ecosystem we are in today - where audiences go to the platforms that are driving the most interaction online,” she explained.

And adland is similarly cognisant that influencers can help build resonance. “Community creators are first and foremost about their craft, and if you recognise them for that and not just use them as a vehicle for delivery, then it opens up a whole new means of production,” explains VML’s EMEA head of social Christina Miller, who judged the influencer category at this year's D&AD awards.

Tactics for utilising creator content in inventive ways include slotting into trends in relevant ways. One example which received widespread praise in the D&AD judging room was Savlon's #HandwashLegends, which played on popular hip-hop hand gestures - enlisting relevant artists to spread a message about hand hygiene to young Indians.

Likewise, Garnier's Vitamin C 'Dull To Bright(on)' utilised the influencer journey trope to good effect, sending a crew of creators from Scotland to Sussex while showcasing the brand's cream.

Miller highlights the importance of "fixed" and "flexible" brand guidelines for the purpose of protection, whilst allowing creators to do their own thing. "We often talk about a fixed and flex model, and so you have fixed guidelines that are mandatory - for example, you might say no profanity. But then there are things that you allow the creator to go and have fun with in their own way," she explained at the D&AD awards."

TMW's executive head of social influence, Olivia Wedderburn concurs, arguing that creator communities are a great way to attract niche consumers - with the caveat that it should never be seen as an easy option or cop out.

"For years, influencers were used as shortcuts to authenticity, a way to drive trust and affinity. But forced vulnerability has become two-dimensional to consumers, who are craving a bit of fun and fiction," Wedderburn explains.

And while the creator economy offers some brands a path to creating authentic connections with consumers, creators are also potentially under threat from the rise of AI-powered virtual influencer.

To offset potential trust issues surrounding the use of AI across influencer campaigns, Ogilvy began an initiative calling on the advertising sector to introduce a policy to highlight its use, known as The AI Accountability Act.

"This essential step safeguards the core principles that make influencer campaigns impactful and ensures their authenticity and credibility... They hold significant influence in shaping the landscape. As influencers are integral to our marketing plans and valued by brands for their effectiveness, addressing this aspect promptly resolves a substantial part of the issue," Rahul Titus, Ogilvy's global head of influence, explains while writing for Creative Salon.

Simulacrum And Simulation

Away from brand control, influencers can also have impacts that do not fall remotely within brand guidelines - and this can have mixed effects.

For example, there is a slew of viral TikToks using the Jess Glynne track 'Hold My Hand', which has become synonymous with Jet2holidays ads. In the trend, the 'Nothing Beats The meme sees a voiceover from a Jet2holidays ad repurposed to humorously commentate over videos of travel mishaps and poor holiday experiences. This, it seems, has garnered more cultural traction than the ad itself ever has.

For Wedderburn, this phenomenon is explained by the theorist Jean Baudrillard who argues that we live in a world in which copies become more powerful than the original. The theory, which is known as 'Simulacra and Simulation', explains the popularity of Disneyland and why memes proliferate and take on lives of their own.

But even outside of nerdy fandoms, franchises, and the original chronically online crowd, it has become increasingly pertinent in an era some describe as 'synthetic capitalism'.

“We’re at the end of the authenticity era as we know it. We’re living in a peak time where replicas upon replicas mean everything feels both fake and generic at the same time,” Wedderburn explains. 

As an example, Wedderburn argues that brands have increasingly developed a tendency to speak the language of memes, which she describes as the “millennial marketing landscape”.

Part of this is the "brand bestie effect”, she continues. The phrase was coined by strategy consultant Joe Burns, whose popular LinkedIn post described how, rather than creating their own distinct voices and tones, brands are mimicking the style of Wendy's and Duolingo to become increasingly informal.

“I get really frustrated when I see brands using community management beyond basic brand engagement as another self-referential exposure piece on content that’s got nothing to do with them. The question is – who’s that helping?,” Wedderburn asks.

She adds that while this tone might work for brands with young audiences like Monzo, in many cases, audiences will not appreciate a chatty tone. The same tone would be unlikely to land for financial institutions such as Natwest, and people who might enjoy a 'bestie interaction' in one context, would be furious if they were spoken to in the same way when they want to pay off a debt.

Ultimately, in the post-authentic world, audiences don't seek conversational relatability with brands; they seek resonance.

Wedderburn explains that at a talk she attended at SXSW in Austin, Liquid Death founder Dan Murphy (whose own brand is famous for its humorous tone and unique packaging) decried brands that seek to put on such a voice.

"He said when people say they want to be authentic they are actually asking how can I fake being authentic. Being authentic is not an act you can just put on - it's something you have to earn," Wedderburn adds.

A prime example of this is when Pepsi's ad, in which Kendall Jenner handed a can of soda to a police officer during a staged protest - a moment widely accused of trivialising the Black Lives Matter movement. Angry viewers felt that both Pepsi and Jenner had no right whatsoever to attempt to link to that volatile conversation, never mind claim to be a solution.

All the world's a stage

On other occasions, brands do hop on trends in ways that fit well - Hellmann's club classic guerilla campaign which referenced Charli XCX's contnroversial tour poster is one example Wedderburn is quick to praise, another is St John's Ambulance CPR bra which highlighted men's fear around providing women CPR.

But Wedderburn believes success only comes when a brand focuses more on developing its own identity than copying others, but feels many fear taking that risk.

"Lots of people don't want to put that work in because it's scary. You're taking a risk. It's easier to be seen as bold by copying tried and tested strategies but there's actually a whole lot more value to be unlocked by trying and failing and trying again," she says.

"That's where resonance comes in and being relatable isn't what everyone thinks it is based on what everyone else is doing. It's think about what you're doing, who you're partnering with, what your terms are."

Ultimately, the post-authentic world is less scary than it seems. Customer interactions have always been a kind of performance - it just means brands have to be aware of their value and role for the customer at different moments.

Rather than relying on AI to replicate tones that have been deemed relatable and chasing influencer endorsements and TikTok lingo, more brands could learn something from traditional hospitality establishments and basic customer service.

Some people want a laugh. Some people want to be spoken to formally. Some want a tablecloth. Some don’t. Everyone wants what they ordered. Absolutely everyone wants to save face.

For brands, authenticity isn't a vibe - it's about providing a service and treating customers with due respect.

Get that right, then add timely and carefully tailored personality. Only then do you have a brand match made in heaven.