Everyone’s Claiming Authenticity

Where are all the authentic brands? In today’s world, where curation is everywhere, vacuous claims are made left and right by brands, and people are inundated with meaningless media content, authenticity is a hard feeling to come by. You can’t visit a website or see an ad where you don’t see brands declaring that they are, in fact, “the most genuine and the most trustworthy.”

The problem is, with so many choices and so much available content, people see right through brand claims that don’t ring true. And because declarations of “authenticity” don’t always ring true, the whole concept has lost some meaning and gained some skepticism. 

But Authenticity Still Matters

Finding the authenticity in a brand and making it resonate true at every touchpoint is still one of the most important things a brand today can do. It might be more difficult, but it is also more critical. It requires getting to those important nuggets of brand truth so that a brand can consistently deliver on promises and interact at with integrity at every touch point. Authentic brands lead with purpose and are emotive in nature.

Authenticity that Feels Right

At Emotive Brand, we help create brands that just feel right – helping them evoke very specific positive feelings in the right ways, with the right people, at every brand touchpoint. At the heart of this, is finding the authenticity in a brand.

Recently, we’ve been working with a very successful, 2nd generation family business entrenched in the coffee world where empty claims of “authenticity” are everywhere. Tired with competitor’s meaningless assertions, they looked to us to help articulate authenticity in a different and meaningful way.

Like we do in any client engagement, we dove into their business and kicked the tires of their brand. We conducted a discourse analysis and a competitive audit and we got to know the landscape of the industry. We met the family who started the business over 35 years ago, toured the facility, observed the ways the employees interacted with each other and the family, learned about their innovative processes, unique and supportive farming relationships, and every step along the supply chain that brings their coffee to life.

You could tell right away, this family operated its business in a way that we’ve never seen before, and it inspired us. Seeing the innate warmth and friendliness of their family flow into their entire way of business helped us unearth an important brand truth: this company was a family that did business like a family, in every way. And this was different from the norm. They treated everyone like family: their employees, their farmers, their retailers, everyone.

This insight alone allowed us to realize the emotional impact the brand had to evoke the story it had to tell, and how it had to tell it. The work of our team became all about finding a new way to express its authenticity in a way that was not boastful, but authentic to who they are and how they behave. They are authentic because that’s always been the only option– it’s just who they are and how they’ve always done business.

The Ah-Ha Moments of Authentic Brands

Uncovering meaningful brand truths and gain an understanding of what will really connect with people and ring genuine is key to any brand looking to create significant experiences today. And when you get to those authentic truths that sit at the heart of any brand and you share them with the people close to the business, they just feel right.

Nothing beats the feeling of being able to reimagine a brand in a fresh and authentic way. It’s an ah-ha moment for everyone in the room. You’ve identified something that just feels so true. That stands out. This help gets the entire organization excited about the new trajectory of the brand and confident that this is a story they can tell and really stand behind – proud and tall. And that’s what authenticity is really about.

Click here to read a case study for another authentic brand and client that needed a new way to think about what made them truly unique.

Emotive Brand transforms the way brands reach out to people, and how people respond back to brands.

Authentic brands interested in learning how to transform your brand into a more authentic, meaningful and emotive brand? Download our white paper.