This is a series of posts on the Art of Marketing conference. This one is based on Max Lenderman's session.
"Authenticity is the key paradigm of how we do marketing in the future, on how the brand talks to the consumers..." (Lenderman)
Anything can be knocked off - just look at China. I recently read that for every Blackberry sold in Indonesia, many more Chinaberries are sold. But yet the originals seem to survive the onslaught of knockoffs and cheap fakes. Why? Because what can not be replicated is a user's experience with the brand - and this is the heart of authenticity (an iPhone can be copied, but Apple's Genius Bar can not replicated).
So the question is how can we improve authenticity in relation to our product or message? Some have proposed that Social Media can increase authenticity. Threadless is a good example of how this is done. Not only do they use Twitter and Facebook to interact with their customer base, they have created a community on their site to host pictures of their customers wearing their favorite Threadless t-shirts and uploading their designs to be voted on to see what should be printed next.
What can your team do to improve authenticity?
My team needs to:
Anything can be knocked off - just look at China. I recently read that for every Blackberry sold in Indonesia, many more Chinaberries are sold. But yet the originals seem to survive the onslaught of knockoffs and cheap fakes. Why? Because what can not be replicated is a user's experience with the brand - and this is the heart of authenticity (an iPhone can be copied, but Apple's Genius Bar can not replicated).So the question is how can we improve authenticity in relation to our product or message? Some have proposed that Social Media can increase authenticity. Threadless is a good example of how this is done. Not only do they use Twitter and Facebook to interact with their customer base, they have created a community on their site to host pictures of their customers wearing their favorite Threadless t-shirts and uploading their designs to be voted on to see what should be printed next.
What can your team do to improve authenticity?
My team needs to:
- Have staff in place to interact with students in the Social Media realm to have authentic conversations and interactions
- Train staff and students on the importance of authenticity and not robotic presentation of our message and the gospel
"By creating brand experience virtually or real is the key to render authenticity." (Lenderman)
photo courtesy of Samout3 on flickr
I would also add that being authentic, when it comes to sharing the gospel, is key to rising above the false beliefs out there.
ReplyDeleteMinisters usually fall in the trap of just proclaiming without being authentic and that will hurt the message the perception of the Person we are proclaiming.