One of the most galling things I see on a semi-regular basis is inauthentic behavior. The same experts I referred to yesterday who spoke about bloggers blogging (not to be confused with ‘lords-a-leaping’) talked about ‘authentic’ behavior on the part of advertisers, marketers and brands. What they said was, in effect, inauthentic brands do and will have a tough time breaking through the clutter of social media…and more importantly…that the consuming public will see this as inauthenticity.
Here’s my counter, however: in the Western world (don’t forget, most of today’s ‘reality programming comes from Europe…), there is so much inauthentic communication between our favorite TV characters, our favorite music and other forms of pop culture that I think marketers give exceedingly too much credit to the public. In other words, if all media companies are going to focus on are fake reality shows, how can people maintain their ability to discern authentic brands, people and media? I do not have all the answers. However, I do think that it is incumbent upon media to do a better job of programming and communicating with the consuming public. Ever since broadcast news departments have needed to turn a profit in terms of ‘salable’ shows, we’ve found ourselves in this quagmire of news ‘creation.’. I have said for years, with regard to media, we are eating our young when it comes to not developing new writers, new scripts and new concepts. I do attribute a lot of this to the volume of media that is out there today. Somewhat like major league pitching talent getting watered down with expansion, communicators are getting watered down due to expansion, too.