To win on social media you need fauxthenticity

I think a lot of your points above can be attributed to the varying quality of execution.

For me, authenticity isn’t about brands trying to look and sound like your friends on social media – that feels like an old, out-dated concept – rather I interpret it as the brand being authentic to itself i.e. talking and acting as you would expect the brand to talk and act on social.

We sometimes see brands twisting themselves into knots trying to reconcile their corporate persona with the more familiar comms style expected on social and more often than not taking the safe route, the result of which is drab, unexceptional content. The gap between how they see themselves and how they need to appear to engage consumers on social is just too wide to bridge successfully and honestly. That is inauthentic.

The answer to that….don’t just change your comms style, change your corporate identity to fit in with consumers expectations of a modern, progressive and conscientious brand. Then there shouldn’t be a gap in the first place and your social comms will not only be authentic but engaging too.

I don’t think you get the internet tbh. The brands that do social media best don’t script or create a show, they respond in real time to trends around them in a way that fits their brand voice and connects with their customers. It’s a show for sure, but not in the way you’ve described. You DO need to be authentic, but more importantly, relevant.

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

@Sean – Agree, it definitely comes down to execution. Trying to sound casual and unrehearsed is really hard when you have to go through however many approvals. But I’m not sure that every brand should be rushing out to change their corporate identities to be “modern, progressive and conscientious”. That’s be a very undifferentiated din. Instead I’m suggesting that they need to get better at projecting their corporate ID and that the mindless push for “authenticity” is standing in the way of them doing that.

@In house – Sure, real time done well is fantastic. But you need a pretty clever team with the full trust of management, minimal approvals and lots of upfront workshopping and planning to make that happen. And then that’s not authentic either anymore, it’s just delivering great work in a shorter amount of time.

Authenticity is used a lot throughout the article without it being explained. Being authentic means being the same on the inside as you say you are on the outside. It’s about transparency, truthfulness and being genuine. The Twitter exchange between Westpac & AirBnB was anything but.

The distance between what we say we do and what we really do forms a legitimacy gap. Social media has given us all a voice to share our opinions and call BS on any brands saying one thing and doing another. This is what happened with Wespac & AirBnB.
We’re all hyper-connected now and media savvy. Brands need to treat us this way to earn our trust. The Wespac & AirBnB episode is an example of brands treating us like dopes.

@Kimota – “Like” 🙂

@Scott – Authenticity doesn’t need to be explained; it has a meaning. It means, as you say, transparency, truthfulness and being genuine – none of which would have any relevance or appeal from a brand outside a crisis situation. Brands which insist on about themselves are desperately dull.

The point is there is an opportunity to do business in a different way – the established corporate brands seek to adapt their old-media persona and fit it on to this social media framework, they are going to fail because people are jaded with big corporate entities – they don’t represent them. Sure these big brands can bolt on a trendy social media team to try and graft an ‘authentic’ voice and image onto the vast corporate expanse-but it is going to fail because people can see right through that.
The business types that really translate well into the social media idiom are smaller, intensely relevant business that do not try and fool anyone that they are ‘hip’.
Authentic is as authentic does – a message cannot be hammered out on the anvil of marketing to fit the paradigm – either you are authentic or you are just pretending to be.

@Parnetll – I disagree. The crafting of a client’s image is the job of yesterday’s communicator. Today we should be helping build our clients’ character.

The days of spinning and manipulation are drawing to an end.

I do agree that we don’t give a rats about brands unless they provide us with value. But re crisis management: If you don’t have a store of trustworthiness to call upon when needed t will be hard for brands to turn to their publics and ask for help/forgiveness in a crisis.

@Scott – I’m not really clear on what the difference is between “crafting a client’s image” and “building a client’s character”. Sounds like six of one and half dozen of the other to me.

@Parnell – there a world of difference between image and character. Image is about looking the part. It’s about putting on a show. It may work with a passive audience – but those days of passivity are over. We are all hyper-connected now.

Character is about substance. It’s about being who you say you are. Reputation is the result of what you do. It’s what others say about you. Not what you say about yourself.

This is the difference between image and character. The difference between old school communications of messaging – ‘sending stuff out’ and new communications where communicators help organisations communicate with conscience. Help earn trust with their publics and help firms enact their declared values.

When you tally up all the time and costs for setting it up, planning, getting approval, legalling both sides of the convo, organising diaries etc at a minimum it’s probably a few thousands dollars and for that money you really have to ask: did all those people for the brands and their agencies really have nothing better to do?

We’re not talking about juniors here either, there are entire teams of people in both organisations that do social for a living, proclaim to be experts in their field, and they still mucked it up.

Genuine question: was the point of all this? Because I’m still not entirely sure. Everyone knows Westpac does homeloans and AirBnB room rental.

Even if they’d been successful in their ‘off the cuff’ convo does anyone seriously believe they’d have changed a single customer’s mind even a little, or more accurately: created sufficient influence on any level with anyone to a point where new business was even remotely more likely to come in to either brand now or in the next 12 months?

Maybe it’s me missing the point here – maybe this wasn’t about generating new business at all – maybe it was all just meant to be a big social, fun, friendly ‘we’re all mates and it’s great’ laugh. And if that was the point you have to ask: why bother? No one cares if two businesses are mates – what are you doing for the customer? How does it improve a customers life seeing two social teams getting paid with customer’s dollars to just muck around on twitter?

Come on… what a complete and utter waste of time and money for all concerned.

“We like where you’re going with this but please explain”
They get in a skincare copywriter from Channel 9?

What amuses me is that the big brands are responding to social media like it is an extension of T.V advertising – I am seeing this approach more and more and it falls flat

The online culture is not the same as television guys – people look to the internet as an alternative to the relentless commercial narrative that makes watching free-to-air TV impossible!
One of these days it will all become clear to you, or not.

@Scott – Brands don’t have personalities. Corporations aren’t people (except in the USA, but hey, so much weird there). Brands are constructs companies hope people will relate to. They change them every few years. You as a person can “communicate with conscience” and “enact declared values” all you like; a company can only communicate consistently or inconsistently.

@What was the point? – Totally agree. Slavishly following fads makes bad strategy.

@Michael – Yes, it’s the same thing that’s happening with branded content. You can’t just whack in a big long article about why your company is fab-o and expect people to read it. People go to different outlets for different kinds of experiences. What they do have to expect is quality, well-thought through work, regardless where and how they encounter the brand.