Authenticity
Building a Brand in an Insincere Age
Published on 7. January 2020
Book
Hardback
216 pages
978-1-4408-7320-1 (ISBN)
Description
Brands are alienating customers by telling the wrong story and championing a false purpose. Your business can avoid the same fate, attract loyal customers, and out-narrate the competition by embracing authenticity. Equal parts provocation and exhortation, the insights of Authenticity apply to business, marketing, and life in general.
Too many companies depend on marketing tactics that don't match the needs and concerns of their customers or embrace messaging and causes that don't connect. Authenticity is an anti-gimmick business book. It prescribes clear strategies that enable companies to communicate in a more genuine, emotional way.
Authors Mark Toft, Jay Sunny, and Rich Taylor provide a series of approaches to help embrace and communicate the purpose of your brand with effectiveness. Whether you're a business executive who wants to be more persuasive or an advertising professional looking to grow your brand, this book combines the authors' successful experiences at top agencies into practical advice that can work for anyone in any business.
Readers will learn the importance of purpose and conflict in marketing activities, how to approach advertising with clarity and passion, and how to plan content while avoiding the false allure of aspirational advertising and insincere corporate social responsibility. Inauthentic messaging can often spell failure for a business, but the company that tells a genuine, compelling story to its clients is the one that succeeds.
Too many companies depend on marketing tactics that don't match the needs and concerns of their customers or embrace messaging and causes that don't connect. Authenticity is an anti-gimmick business book. It prescribes clear strategies that enable companies to communicate in a more genuine, emotional way.
Authors Mark Toft, Jay Sunny, and Rich Taylor provide a series of approaches to help embrace and communicate the purpose of your brand with effectiveness. Whether you're a business executive who wants to be more persuasive or an advertising professional looking to grow your brand, this book combines the authors' successful experiences at top agencies into practical advice that can work for anyone in any business.
Readers will learn the importance of purpose and conflict in marketing activities, how to approach advertising with clarity and passion, and how to plan content while avoiding the false allure of aspirational advertising and insincere corporate social responsibility. Inauthentic messaging can often spell failure for a business, but the company that tells a genuine, compelling story to its clients is the one that succeeds.
Reviews / Votes
Recommended. All readers. * Choice *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
College/higher education
Interest Age: From 7 to 17 years
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 156 mm
Weight
510 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4408-7320-1 (9781440873201)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Mark Toft, chief strategy officer and cofounder of the Narrator Group, was lead digital writer for the Staples Easy Button.
Jay Sunny, chief creative officer and cofounder of the Narrator Group, spent seven years as an art director at the two top advertising agencies in Switzerland.
Rich Taylor, senior vice president of the Narrator Group, is a marketing and sales leader with experience in planning, developing, and implementing successful marketing campaigns.
Jay Sunny, chief creative officer and cofounder of the Narrator Group, spent seven years as an art director at the two top advertising agencies in Switzerland.
Rich Taylor, senior vice president of the Narrator Group, is a marketing and sales leader with experience in planning, developing, and implementing successful marketing campaigns.
Content
Acknowledgments
This is not an introduction
PART I: SETTING THE STAGE
1. The best definitions of branding and advertising you'll find
2. What we mean by authenticity
PART II: WHY AUTHENTICITY
3. Because it's what we need and resist most
4. Because branding and advertising are ready for an authenticity revolution
5. Because the survival of your business depends on it
PART III: WHAT AUTHENTICITY REQUIRES
6. Authenticity requires purpose
7. What your brand's purpose is not
8. Find your hill and defend it
9. What's your exploding scoreboard?
10. Understand your audience
11. Name the problem and how you solve it
12. Seek conflict
13. Creation over disruption
14. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer and ask, "So what?"
15. Use it or lose it
16. Remember, people would rather like than hate you
17. Know your role, and don't try to be the hero
18. You can't succeed without emotion
19. Being emotional doesn't mean being saccharine
20. Authenticity requires avoiding business jargon
PART IV: FIXING AN INAUTHENTIC BRAND
21. Consider the new reality about how people make decisions
22. Cause with caution
23. Remember, a company without a story is a company without a strategy
24. Be honest about whether your current brand story is boring
25. Trim the fat
26. Kill your darlings
27. Don't try to be funny
28. Nobody ever played air guitar to a logo
29. This is not a generic brand video
30. There's beauty in simplicity
31. Speaking of beauty. . .
32. There is no such thing as speed farming or abracadabra marketing
33. What Frank Lloyd Wright can teach us about branding
34. Play to the audience, not the amps (or, what the Ramones can teach us about branding)
PART V: BREAKING BAD HABITS, BUILDING BETTER ONES
35. Take a chance on your customers
36. Beware the fool's gold of easy brilliance
37. Create hot, edit cold
38. It's an act of daring to be sincere
39. Authenticity and memorability
40. Consider why your dog stares at you when he poops
41. Know the proper role of research
42. Know your "80 years young" boundaries
43. Avoid these words
44. Avoid inauthenticity in photos and imagery
45. Get your white tuxedo dirty
46. Don't fall in love with celebrities
47. Don't spill your candy in the lobby
48. A loud voice can make even the truth sound foolish
49. Don't get that person. Be that person.
50. Shut up, he explained
51. Maybe people don't want to join your conversation
52. Say yes to criticism, no to condemnation
PART VI: SELECT PROFILES IN AUTHENTICITY
53. The customer experience paradox
54. The non-flashy warehouse club
55. HBO and authentic brand evolution
56. LEGO: Saved by loyal customers
57. The surprise and delight of Zappos
58. Airbnb and the importance of not giving up
59. CrossFit and the art of staying out of the way
PART VII: PROFILES THAT SHOW THE PERILS OF INSINCERITY
60. Spotting an insincere brand
61. BOA, the bank opposed to authenticity
62. Segway, the overhyped machine
63. McDonald's, not exactly lovin' it
64. United Airlines and the abandonment of purpose
65. Sears and a brand magic that was lost in transition
66. Facebook fakery
67. Saturn, god of both wealth and dissolution
68. Monsanto, where lawyers control the message
PART VIII: USING MEDIA AUTHENTICALLY
69. The medium is a message, not the message
70. Media 101
71. Media and authenticity
72. Media by the numbers
73. Media traps to avoid
74. Media and your message
PART IX: ASSESSMENT TOOLS
75. A general guide for assessing marketing ideas
76. Grading the authenticity of your marketing
77. Your authenticity checklist/gut check
78. An abridged Story Workshop (c)
79. Watch out for tactical tricks
PART X: CLOSING THOUGHTS
80. The moral of the story
81. Share your story with us
Thank You
Notes
Index
About the Authors
This is not an introduction
PART I: SETTING THE STAGE
1. The best definitions of branding and advertising you'll find
2. What we mean by authenticity
PART II: WHY AUTHENTICITY
3. Because it's what we need and resist most
4. Because branding and advertising are ready for an authenticity revolution
5. Because the survival of your business depends on it
PART III: WHAT AUTHENTICITY REQUIRES
6. Authenticity requires purpose
7. What your brand's purpose is not
8. Find your hill and defend it
9. What's your exploding scoreboard?
10. Understand your audience
11. Name the problem and how you solve it
12. Seek conflict
13. Creation over disruption
14. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer and ask, "So what?"
15. Use it or lose it
16. Remember, people would rather like than hate you
17. Know your role, and don't try to be the hero
18. You can't succeed without emotion
19. Being emotional doesn't mean being saccharine
20. Authenticity requires avoiding business jargon
PART IV: FIXING AN INAUTHENTIC BRAND
21. Consider the new reality about how people make decisions
22. Cause with caution
23. Remember, a company without a story is a company without a strategy
24. Be honest about whether your current brand story is boring
25. Trim the fat
26. Kill your darlings
27. Don't try to be funny
28. Nobody ever played air guitar to a logo
29. This is not a generic brand video
30. There's beauty in simplicity
31. Speaking of beauty. . .
32. There is no such thing as speed farming or abracadabra marketing
33. What Frank Lloyd Wright can teach us about branding
34. Play to the audience, not the amps (or, what the Ramones can teach us about branding)
PART V: BREAKING BAD HABITS, BUILDING BETTER ONES
35. Take a chance on your customers
36. Beware the fool's gold of easy brilliance
37. Create hot, edit cold
38. It's an act of daring to be sincere
39. Authenticity and memorability
40. Consider why your dog stares at you when he poops
41. Know the proper role of research
42. Know your "80 years young" boundaries
43. Avoid these words
44. Avoid inauthenticity in photos and imagery
45. Get your white tuxedo dirty
46. Don't fall in love with celebrities
47. Don't spill your candy in the lobby
48. A loud voice can make even the truth sound foolish
49. Don't get that person. Be that person.
50. Shut up, he explained
51. Maybe people don't want to join your conversation
52. Say yes to criticism, no to condemnation
PART VI: SELECT PROFILES IN AUTHENTICITY
53. The customer experience paradox
54. The non-flashy warehouse club
55. HBO and authentic brand evolution
56. LEGO: Saved by loyal customers
57. The surprise and delight of Zappos
58. Airbnb and the importance of not giving up
59. CrossFit and the art of staying out of the way
PART VII: PROFILES THAT SHOW THE PERILS OF INSINCERITY
60. Spotting an insincere brand
61. BOA, the bank opposed to authenticity
62. Segway, the overhyped machine
63. McDonald's, not exactly lovin' it
64. United Airlines and the abandonment of purpose
65. Sears and a brand magic that was lost in transition
66. Facebook fakery
67. Saturn, god of both wealth and dissolution
68. Monsanto, where lawyers control the message
PART VIII: USING MEDIA AUTHENTICALLY
69. The medium is a message, not the message
70. Media 101
71. Media and authenticity
72. Media by the numbers
73. Media traps to avoid
74. Media and your message
PART IX: ASSESSMENT TOOLS
75. A general guide for assessing marketing ideas
76. Grading the authenticity of your marketing
77. Your authenticity checklist/gut check
78. An abridged Story Workshop (c)
79. Watch out for tactical tricks
PART X: CLOSING THOUGHTS
80. The moral of the story
81. Share your story with us
Thank You
Notes
Index
About the Authors