Authenticity What Consumers Really Want--A Harvard Business School Press Book

A HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PRESS BOOK SUMMARY

Authenticity
What Consumers Really Want

by James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II

Focus
Communication

Take-Aways
• People crave authentic offerings of all types.

Finance & Accounting
Global Business
Innovation &
Entrepreneurship
Leadership &
Managing People
Organizational
Development
Sales & Marketing
Strategy & ExecutionTechnology & Operations

• This craving is getting more intense in an increasingly artificial world.
• To be perceived as fully authentic, your company must be “true to itself” and “what
it says it is” to others.
• Traditional advertising is phony and is losing efficacy.
• Effective marketing today involves “placemaking experiences,” which enable
companies to be who they say they are.
• Suchmarketing experiences must be authentic if they are to work.
• The five genres of authenticity can apply to any offering. Authentic offerings should
be rendered as natural, original, exceptional, referential or influential.
• Totally fake offerings (such as Disneyland or Las Vegas) can be perceived as
authentic if they are honest about their fakery.
• Your company’s future is constrained by itsheritage.
• Successful business execution requires working within these constraints.

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Copyright 2007 James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II. Summary Copyright 2007 Harvard Business School Publishing
Corporation and getAbstract Ltd (Switzerland). All rights reserved. ISBN-13: 9781422117019

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A HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PRESS BOOK SUMMARY

Relevance
What You Will Learn
In this Abstract, you will learn: 1) Whatauthenticity is; 2) How it can be a source of
competitive advantage; and 3) How to deliver it.
Overview
“When we say a thing or an event is real,” wrote Pulitzer-winning novelist Carol Shields,
“we honor it. But when a thing is made up – regardless of how true and just it seems – we
t urn up our noses.” In an increasingly manufactured “real” world, though, how can your
business give customers asense of authenticity? That’s the question James H. Gilmore
and B. Joseph Pine II tackle in this thorough analysis of authenticity, wandering through
such diverse fields as existential philosophy, architectural criticism and even relativistic
physics. They discuss examples of perceived authenticity from Coca-Cola to Disneyland.
The authors explain how an economic offering can be fake, but stillbe rendered as
authentic. The key is to determine whether your offering and how you represent it are
real or fake, and to design your marketing strategy accordingly. All consumers want
authenticity, but the more you tell them you are authentic, the less they will believe you.

Abstract

“Practically all
consumers desire
authenticity.”

“Even the me-meme generation
eventually grows
upto desire the
real-real-real.”

The Red Pill or the Blue Pill?
Human beings have always been obsessed with the real and abjured the fake, the phony
and the contrived. In The Republic, Plato told an allegory about benighted, cave-dwelling
people who mistook shadows on the wall for reality. In the mid-20th century, Jean-Paul
Sartre extended this idea to personality, describing people so...