Chapter 12

Being Authentic

This above all: To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

—Shakespeare

In the physical world, we can usually tell when someone is lying to us (or at least not being entirely truthful). Why? They give their true intentions away through unintended body movements. In their book Spy the Lie, three CIA veterans, Philip Houston, Michael Floyd, and Susan Carnicero, explain some of the ways that people give away that they are not telling the truth.

There are also plenty of nonverbal cues to lying, though the authors say that averting eye contact, often thought to signify evasiveness, isn’t one of them, since many of us look away during conversations. More telling: hiding the mouth or eyes, throat-clearing or swallowing, biting or licking the lips, and what the authors call “anchor point movement,” shifting weight and position around the body at rest as a way to reduce anxiety, like fidgeting in a chair.1

Ultimately, lying or trying to convince audiences with less than truthful approaches undermines an organization’s authenticity. Audiences engaging with us look for authenticity. It builds trust and helps them move through the strengthening stages of relationship development. According to James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II in their book Authenticity, “In industry after industry, in customer after customer, authenticity has overtaken quality as the prevailing purchasing criterion, just as quality overtook cost, and cost overtook availability.”2

People want the businesses they deal with to be authentic. Moreover, that authenticity is manifested in the brand experience, both online and in the real world. For example, Ogilvie’s authenticity is a combination of the products they curate on our behalf, the helpful interaction of their staff with customers, and the expertise they gladly share. Coca-Cola is building a new level of authenticity by turning their website into a place of helpful, engaging stories.

What do people say about places like that?

They say Ogilvie’s is the “The Real Deal,” “Straight Shooters,” and “Good Guys.”

This is what makes authenticity so critical in the digital world. As Gina Piccalo says in the Los Angeles Times, “In the blink of a satellite, modern life has become an endless high-speed connection. It is streaming 24/7 . . . you are always online . . . checking email, checking voicemail. What you crave is something more visceral. . . . You want the stripped-down, lo-fi version of life, the kind that feels vintage, handmade, or home grown. You want authenticity.”3

Why? Because in that vintage, handmade, or homegrown life is a set of relationships. It is a focus on people, on the experience and service provided rather than only the product.

Authenticity is a reflection of our desire to connect with others we value and trust, with people that share our view of the world.

The problem, then, is that when people or businesses appear inauthentic, it undercuts that potential relationship. Why? Because when people feel that someone to whom they are talking with is authentic, they tend to share more. When they share more, they create dyadic communication.4 They engage more, which moves them through the stages of relationships faster.

How We Communicate in the Real World

When we walk into a retail store, like Ogilvie’s, and engage with a salesperson, there is a lot of communication that goes on even before we say a single word.

We’re learning that in human beings the second, nonverbal conversation actually starts first, in the instant after an emotion or an impulse fires deep within the brain but before it has been articulated. Indeed, research shows that people’s natural and unstudied gestures are often indicators of what they will think and say next.5

Much of what we do in the real world is nonverbal. Consider a hug, for example. When we go to hug someone, we are thinking about the impulse to embrace him or her way before we actually have him or her in our arms. As such, we may present clues (i.e., our arms outstretched, invading personal space) that give away our true intentions.

The words we say may actually contradict those nonverbal cues we are sending out, which makes ensuring authenticity even more complicated.

Still, businesses like Ogilvie’s have built stable, loyal customer bases rooted in deep, intimate relationships because they maintain authenticity. How does that happen, and how can we ensure it continues to happen in the digital world?

Does Digital Make It Too Easy to Not Be Authentic?
Take a moment and look at your email inbox. How about your Facebook wall? Or your Twitter feed?
Are there times when you feel overwhelmed?
Remember, you are just one person. Now imagine your email inbox, Facebook wall, and Twitter feed multiplied by 100. By 1,000?
The scale of the digital world can be daunting when it comes to authenticity. The problem is when organizations incorporate channels like Facebook and Twitter into their digital presence, they are involving themselves in the conversation and all the expectations that go along with it . . . like being available and being involved.
“Part of the issue,” says Mike Volpe, CMO of HubSpot, “may be the world we live in. It’s just easier to ignore it.”
But we can’t ignore it, right?
Again, adopting the channels also invites the expectations. The real-world is no different. There are also expectations for retail environments.
“In the physical world, when someone walks into your store and you don’t know them, it’s embarrassing,” says Mike. “And when they ask you a question and you don’t answer, it’s awkward. But when someone sends a Tweet or posts to a blog or emails, it’s easy to ignore.”
It’s a disconnection between the opportunity to engage and the expectations of engagement. Organizations want to engage but they don’t want all the work that goes along with it. As we pointed out in Chapter 4, most organizations haven’t embraced the changes required to take advantage of the digital engagement opportunities. In most cases, organizations are still looking for measurement. Is all this “engagement stuff” paying off? Unfortunately, it’s the wrong question to ask.
“When someone walks into your store and asks a question, you don’t do a ROI calculation about whether you should or shouldn’t answer the question,” says Mike. “It’s not, ‘hold, on, let me look up your record and see what you’ve spent with me last year’ or ‘what’s your income potential?’ You just answer the question.”
Embracing digital channels and ignoring the expectations your audience has of participants within those channels is the most surefire way to undermine authenticity.
Robert Scoble, Startup Liaison for Rackspace and coauthor of The Age of Context, tells a funny yet poignant story about ignoring expectations: “I walked into an Iranian restaurant in London and they had a ‘Like us on Facebook’ on their window. So I went to their Facebook page and they had never posted anything. Why should I ‘Like’ you on Facebook if you don’t post today’s menu, or specials, or let me know something about the chef, or tell me something about a meal. Do you ever go to Facebook? Do you know how it works?”

What Is Authenticity?

According to dictionary.com, one of the definitions of authenticity is:

Accurate in representation of the facts; trustworthy; reliable
What’s the key word here? That’s right.
Trustworthy.

Consider this thought experiment—the local appliance store in town has just hired two new salespeople. One salesperson is friendly, helpful, and very transparent with customers about the products he’s representing. He is even willing to compliment competitor products when it seems appropriate. The other salesperson talks only about the superiority of the products he sells. When presented with information about the superiority of a competitor product on particular features, he argues with the prospective customer against evidence.

Most of us would agree that the first salesperson is probably more authentic, and respectful of our relationship needs as potential customers. We would probably prefer to shop with him, and would be more likely to share information about our needs. A longer-term relationship may develop, especially if we do decide to purchase from him.

The second salesperson? We are more likely to avoid his hard sell tactics, and less likely to share our actual needs with someone so quick to close.

A Personal Tale of Authenticity
Jason Thibeault recently purchased a new car for his wife to replace an ailing Chrysler minivan. Wanting nothing to do with Chrysler again, Jason’s wife headed over to a local Ford dealership, Berge Ford in Gilbert, Arizona. Instead of pressuring her to buy, taking her license (they actually let her drive the car around without ever seeing her license), and all the other tactics that make people fear the dealership, the salesperson that helped her (not even the one who she had been corresponding with via email) was all about assistance. He wanted to know about her life and how she drove. And, of course, he respected the fact that she came in with a ton of research from the Internet (including invoice pricing). In the first visit, when Jason was unable to join, she test-drove the car with her two daughters. At the end of it, her daughters were ecstatic. “Buy the car, Mom!” They wailed. But the salesperson wouldn’t have any of it. “No, I think you should think about it a day or two,” he said. “Maybe talk it over with your husband, then come back and test drive it again.” Despite having also tested out two competitor products, it was clear the Ford had won, if not for the product, then for the authentic experience at the dealership. And when she returned for another test drive (and to meet the actual salesperson with whom she’d already established a relationship digitally and who was, by the way, very consistently “helpful”), it was easy to sign the deal.

In short, the first salesperson is trustworthy—he is representing the company’s values, being honest, and acting with integrity. He is facilitating a sale, not making one.

Trust: The Foundation of Authenticity

Authenticity ultimately affects the “trust-bond” between a trustor and a trustee. Any trustor expects those they intend to trust to display four general characteristics6:

  • Reputation—which results from an evaluation of the trustee’s past actions and conduct.
  • Performance—which is the relationship between the trustee’s present actions and the conduct required to fulfill his or her current responsibilities as specified by the trustor.
  • Confidence—which is an assurance of expectation of action and conduct the trustor has in the trustee.
  • Competence—which consists of having the knowledge, skills, talents, and traits required to be able to perform a task to any given standard.

Returning to our thought experiment, the first salesperson exhibits all of those characteristics:

  • Reputation: People are approaching him because they’ve perhaps heard about the way he treats people.
  • Performance: He continues to represent the company’s values while providing value to the customer.
  • Confidence: His product knowledge and helpful approach to the sales process instills confidence in customers that he’s doing the best for them . . . not just the company.
  • Competence: He clearly demonstrates his ability to have a conversation about the products and how they help to solve the customer’s challenges.a

In fact, according to Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, honesty can be a competitive advantage. “To overcome customers’ suspicions that you are a scam artist, you must go to extremes to show you are on their side. Beyond trustworthiness, you must achieve ‘trustability.’ It’s more a proactive stance that has you not just keeping up your end of a bargain, but ensuring that the bargain is the best one from the customer’s point of view—and even saving customers from their own mistakes.”7

This is precisely why Berge Ford won Jason’s business!

The Importance of Authenticity

Authenticity is critical in establishing relationships. As a manifestation of the level of trust between two people, authenticity serves as the gauge to relationship opportunity—if the authenticity is low, trust cannot be established, and it will be extremely difficult to develop a relationship.

One of the keys to Ogilvie’s success is their ability to cultivate authenticity when dealing with customers and community. This approach has helped foster long-standing trust (perhaps even passed down through generations) that keeps people coming to Ogilvie’s instead of the big chains down the road.

But trust is not something freely given. According to Lee Colan at Inc., “You cannot buy trust, but it is free. Trust is not spoken, it is demonstrated. Trust cannot be requested, it must be earned.”8

And perhaps that is why so many brands fail at trust. Since 2000, global PR consultancy Edelman has given us the “state of brands”—which brands are trusted and which are not. In 2013, their research found that businesses in general were trusted by 58 percent of survey respondents globally.9 Before you fawn over your brand, put that into perspective—4 out of 10 people don’t trust you. Although there isn’t any correlating evidence, it’s quite possible that digital is responsible for the lack of trust.

Trust in the Digital World

Of course, there are many differences between the real world and digital world, most obvious being the lack of face-to-face communication. How can we use nonverbal cues to help establish a trust-bond? How can we demonstrate authenticity when everything is done electronically?

Part of the problem is with identity. When organizations engage via social networks, for example, it is unclear who is “behind the brand” actually doing the talking.

A Case Study in Being Authentic
Dell was not always as effective as it is now at social media. In 2005, a scathing blog post by journalist Jeff Jarvis entitled “Dell Lies. Dell Sucks” rocked the corporation into action. By 2011, Dell had been heralded as one of the most social brands in the world. How did they do this? They recognized the need to establish trust, credibility, and authenticity. This understanding led them to develop the Dell Social Media Command Center, a room dedicated to watching, listening, and engaging with consumers through social media. And, more than that, it is a corporate training program that has, as of 2012, trained more than 10,000 Dell employees to be brand advocates through social media channels.10
Instead of hiding behind a corporate “Dell” social media brand, individual employees are the face of the company’s social media interactions. According to Karen Quintos, Dell’s CMO:
Internal training is key. Our 100,000 team members around the world are all brand ambassadors and are having constant customer interactions. Our training and certification program in social media is available for all Dell employees to become “Dell Certified Social Media and Community Professionals.” We train our team members to use social media in their jobs, technical support and customer care. To date we’ve trained 10,000 employees who are interested in using social media to augment their jobs. Through Dell’s Social Media Listening and Command Center, we aggregate and find our way through the 25,000 conversations about Dell every day (more than 6 million every year).11
According to Ted Rubin, the author of Return on Relationships, Dell exemplifies companies “that are adding personality to what they are doing and people feel connected to them because of it. That’s what happens when you put a person’s name or face to a social media account, when you give them the ability to have conversations. You create a more authentic experience.”

Figure 12.1 Dell Social Media Timeline

Source: Dell, Inc. 2013.

image

As exemplified by Dell, identity can go a long way toward establishing authenticity (and ultimately trust) because it creates a more tangible connection between two people who may never meet in the real world.

There’s no doubt that trust is hard to establish. Part of the issue might result from the fact that we are requiring it in the first place. Think back to Chapter 3, where we discussed the different relationship types. Not all relationship types are built on a need for trust or authenticity. It’s a matter of figuring out when it’s important to expose identity as a way to engender authenticity and trust. According to Julia Kirby, editor at the Harvard Business Review, “the real problem might be that, as time goes on, consumers are increasingly being placed in situations where they are forced to trust—and they resent that. One driver of this is the large-scale shift from a product- to a service-based economy. If what you’re buying is a chair or a wristwatch, quality checking and price finding are straightforward. No particular leap of faith is required. But if you’re hiring a pest-control company to save your house from termites, or a security service to fend off identity thieves, or a college to educate your child, you have no option but to trust. For much of what they buy today, consumers can’t even tell whether the outcomes are good, let alone whether the prices are right.”12

What’s the point? Trust is important as a factor of relationship need. Each relationship need that we identified probably has a different requirement of trust (i.e., “BFF” requires far more trust than “You Don’t See Me”). And, if we require too much trust, for example, asking someone with a “You Don’t See Me” relationship to sign up to access the information they are seeking from our website, we undermine the possibility of a deeper relationship.

So, ultimately, we are back to the need to understand what kind of relationship our customers want, especially online.

The Importance of Transparency

Establishing authenticity in the digital world, then, is about having the right kind of conversation, at the right time, with the right kind of relationship type . . . consistently. Achieving that exemplifies our understanding of the audience. It creates the ultimate kind of confidence and forms a trust-bond. The audience trusts us to give them the kind of information (and engagement) that is suitable to their needs every time that we engage with them.

But it all falls apart if digital isn’t authentic—exactly what the example of Dell illustrates. Consumers have to believe that there is authenticity in the discussion or relationships will never get off the ground. By aggressively embracing transparency, we can eventually force the “authenticity elephant” out of the room.

Julia Kirby, from Harvard Business Review, in her book Trust in the Age of Transparency, reflects, “The truth is that transparency is something that a company mostly controls and that mostly reassures its customers. By giving people a window into its workings, a company can show it has a sound process that it’s adhering to. It can avoid asking customers to have faith in a black box. The greater transparency, in other words, the greater the trust.”

By combining a strong organizational value for transparency with reinforcement in actual practice, like Dell did in exposing how they approach and train employees for social media, and by taking advantage of the personalization features afforded to us in the digital world, we create a system to build long-lasting trust-bonds with our audiences.

Authenticity in the Digital World

As James T. Noble remarks in a blog, “the more virtual our lives get, the more we hunger after something genuine. What people really want now is not just a product or a service, it is an experience. An experience that is more honest and transparent . . . more authentic.”13 Noble has defined a list of practices that drive authenticity in the digital world.

We have captured a few below:

  • Share your mission and your passions with enthusiasm.
  • Maintain your core identity at all times.
  • Always be consistent and avoid giving mixed messages.
  • Get to know your audience and their desires and needs.
  • Actively engage with your audience through social media.
  • Show personality through content like blogs/video/updates/bios, and so on.
  • Share secrets, advice, and inside information where appropriate.
  • Tailor your content to suit different audiences across multiple platforms.
  • Position yourself as an authority through audience interaction and offering the benefits of your expertise and experience.
  • Highlight your achievements and experience on websites and across social media.

Each of these points leads to the effort of building the trust-bond. Distilling them into their relation to the four characteristics related to the trust-bond discussed earlier:

  • Truthfulness: Be honest and fair in our presentation of product capabilities; acknowledge competitor strengths truthfully to build “reputation.”
  • Personable: Our engagement needs a face. Audiences want to know who is responding, and what qualifications support their ability to respond. Being personable builds “confidence.”
  • Expertise: The audience needs to know that we know we have specialized expertise, to believe we are “competent.”
  • Consistency: Whatever the conversation, the voice, tone, style, approach, information . . . everything needs to be consistent across social media channels and platforms. Consistency needs to match “performance.”

The key thing to understand in translating real-world authenticity to digital engagements is that people are engaging with every bit of content we publish. Everything that we publish either helps to establish or undermine our authenticity, our trustworthiness, and ultimately the strength and longevity of any type of online relationship we might cultivate.

The ultimate test is whether visitors begin sharing valuable information with us, which they will do only if they feel we are being truly authentic. In a recent study by Infosys,14 consumers revealed that they wanted to share information, especially as part of an online purchase. (See Figure 12.2.)

Figure 12.2 The Personal Data Exchange

Source: Infosys.

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Without authenticity online, there will be little chance to capitalize on that willingness to share information.

The “Domino Effect”

Okay, raise your hand if you haven’t eaten at Domino’s Pizza in the past 10 years because, well, the pizza tasted like cardboard. The quality of Domino’s product was a significant issue for them. What did they do? Did they try and tell their audience that they didn’t know what real pizza tasted like? No, they came out and admitted it in a very transparent ad during 2009.15 (See Figure 12.3.)

Figure 12.3 Domino’s Pizza: Negative Customer Feedback

image

“Tastes Like Cardboard”

It’s hard to admit publicly when your product is bad. Sure, Domino’s could have ignored the comments and continued doing what they do. They also could have tried to hide all the social media comments (again, you can’t hide anything in the digital world). But they didn’t. In a brilliant display of transparency, they came out and admitted their weaknesses and made a bold claim to fix them—reinventing their pizza recipe.

According to Sam Osche in “The Many Acts of Domino’s Pizza,” it was all about delivering honesty and transparency. “The right messaging, it turned out, was the unbridled truth. Domino’s launched a series of advertisements supporting the new pizza recipe that featured Domino’s customers decrying the old one, and employees—including the CEO, J. Patrick Doyle—admitting that changes needed to be made.” Doyle emphasized that it was all about treating people the right way, giving them what they wanted: “What consumers were looking for was honesty and transparency because nobody was giving it to them at that point,” he says, noting that the public trust in government, banks, and other big corporations had waned.

The key with Domino’s turnaround wasn’t playing coy with marketing messages. It wasn’t veiling the truth. It was being brutally honest. According to Gary Stibel, founder and CEO of the New England Consulting Group, it was being disruptively honest.

“They engaged consumers with disruptive honesty. Once they had gotten people’s attention with disruptive honesty, they delivered a meaningful message: We taste better. They didn’t say, ‘We taste better than your favorite pizzeria,’ because they probably don’t. They said, ‘We taste better than we used to,’ which is not that difficult a statement to make.”16

The result was tremendous. Just a year after making the announcement and launching the new recipe, Domino’s reported a bump on first-quarter sales of over 14 percent. But even more than that, from 2008 to 2013, the stock has grown exponentially from a company low of $3.09 to over $67.00! But that stock price reflects something more fundamental—trust. Domino’s has continued to build on the messaging they delivered in 2009. And that consistency (to giving their customers the best possible pizza and experience they can) continues to create positive relationships with their audience . . . relationships that push sales higher and higher.

Even Politicians Can Be Authentic

When that “time of year” rolls around, everyone secretly cringes. Street corners fill with posters. Slogans fill the airwaves. And, of course, commercials run what seems like every second of every day.

That’s right. It’s election time.

But one politician in Massachusetts decided to do it differently. Carl Sciortino, Jr., an openly gay member of the Massachusetts state legislature (and a liberal . . . gasp), decided that instead of getting on the air and telling everyone what he believed and why he was so important, he’d tell a story (see Figure 12.4). A story that involved his staunch Tea Party Republican father.

Figure 12.4 Carl Sciortino, Jr.: His Story

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According to Ann Handley, the Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs, “this video is a fantastic example of using story (and the power of emotional resonance) to get people involved. In this case, to get people to back the political campaign.”

But what makes the story so powerful is its authenticity (or what Gary Stibel said of the Domino’s ad, its ability to be “disruptively honest”; as we will learn in Chapter 14, it’s disruptive because it upsets our preconceived notions of political candidate credibility). Not only does the lack of an “in-your-face” campaign message disarm us, but the repartee between liberal son and conservative dad (punctuated with an “I love you . . . still” at the end) humanizes politicians in a climate that consistently sees them as villains.

Summing It Up

Authenticity is the cornerstone of relationships. If our audience doesn’t feel we are the “real deal,” they will head for the proverbial exit (which means they will share less information with us and participate less in our conversations). That’s because authenticity is the catalyst for trust. If we want the audience to trust us (so that they will want to engage more), then we must be transparent—not only about our product (and how it compares to the competitors; hey, if it’s number two, acknowledge that and work to make it number one), but also about our identity and what our organization stands for. In the digital world, there is nothing to hide.

Helpful Takeaways

Okay, time to get real. There is no place to hide in the digital world. Your secrets will get “outed” no matter how hard you try to keep them. So hone up. Confess where your product is weaker and praise where it’s stronger . . . then make it better. Here are some helpful tips, tricks, techniques, and things you can do today. Note that these aren’t in any particular order.

  • Confess your sins. You’ll be surprised what a little honesty does for you. With so many review sites on the Internet, people are bound to expose your product’s or service’s failures. Better to get out in front of them with content. This will help engender your audience to your authenticity while also giving you the opportunity to talk about how you are making the product better.
  • Make your relationship clear. If you are focused on selling over everything else (and we don’t recommend this strategy), tell people that. If you are planning to focus on helpfulness, come out and say it. Transparency can be your best weapon in a digital world, where consumers are trying to determine the fakes from the “real deals.”
  • Expose your team to your audience. Don’t use a brand to hide the employees who are already speaking with your customers on the phone and via email. Let them have a face (and a voice) with your customers in the digital world, as well. Use their pictures, let them write bios that tell people not only their qualifications but also their hobbies and interests. Humanize your business.
  • Don’t wait until there’s a catastrophe to be honest. Although honesty in any form is good, being proactive is even better. Just like Domino’s, catch your audience off-guard by being forthright now rather than waiting when it’s “necessary” for damage control.

Notes

1. Susan Adams, “How to Tell When Someone Is Lying,” Forbes.com, August 13, 2012, www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2012/08/13/how-to-tell-when-someone-is-lying/.

2. James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine III, Authenticity (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2007).

3. Gina Piccalo, “Looking for ‘Real,’” Los Angeles Times, December 6, 2003.

4. http://psychology.answers.wikia.com/wiki/What_is_dyadic_communication

5. Nick Morgan, “How to Become an Authentic Speaker,” Harvard Business Review, November 2008, http://hbr.org/2008/11/how-to-become-an-authentic-speaker/ar/2.

6. Piotr Sztompka, Trust: A Sociological Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

7. Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Extreme Trust: Honesty as a Competitive Advantage (New York: Portfolio Press, 2012).

8. Kevin Daum, “To Trust or Not to Trust: What Choice Do You Have?” Inc.com. Nov 13, 2013. From: www.inc.com/kevin-daum/to-trust-or-not-to-trust-what-choice-do-you-have.html

9. Edelman Trust Barometer. 2013. From: www.edelman.com/insights/intellectual-property/trust-2013/

10. Jennifer Rooney, “In Dell Social-Media Journey, Lessons for Marketers About the Power of Listening,” Forbes.com, September 25, 2012, www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferrooney/2012/09/25/in-dell-social-media-journey-lessons-for-marketers-about-the-power-of-listening/

11. Shannon Wilkinson, “Dell’s Social Media Turnaround: A Case Study,” Reputation-communications.com, March 6, 2013, www.reputation-communications.com/blog/2013/03/06/dell%E2%80%99s-social-media-turnaround-a-case-study/.

12. Julia Kirby, “Trust in the Age of Transparency,” Harvard Business Review, July–August 2012.

13. James T. Noble, “Truth Will Out—Why Authenticity Is the Key to Growing Your Business,” Kissmetrics.com, http://blog.kissmetrics.com/truth-will-out/

14. Infosys, “Engaging with Digital Consumers: Insights from Infosys Survey,” www.infosys.com/newsroom/features/Pages/digital-consumer-study-infographic.aspx.

15. www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH5R56jILag

16. Sam Oches, “The Many Acts of Domino’s Pizza.” QSR, August 2010, www.qsrmagazine.com/menu-innovations/many-acts-domino-s-pizza

aNote: this is also linked to “expertise,” another characteristic that we will discuss in a subsequent section.

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