Decoding Authenticity

Whether in our personal or corporate lives, authenticity is highly valued. Yet it is a nebulous and subjective concept. We need a more precise way of defining what we mean when we say ‘authenticity’.

It's fascinating how the idea of authenticity has permeated our collective consciousness.

In my (professional) marketing world, authenticity is one of the most prized brand attributes. 

Trust, famously promoted by global PR firm Edelman as the key to brand affinity, is ultimately quite functional. When you look at the most trusted global brands, it’s a reasonably prosaic list. Despite its questionable tax practices and environmental impact, people trust Amazon because it almost always delivers products when it says it will. 

Authenticity, on the other hand, suggests a worthier and more profound aspect of a brand or a person's image. Our ordinary conception of it has more to do with artistry and activism than trustworthy levels of accuracy and punctuality. This conception imbues authenticity with value and explains why, everywhere I turn, I come across marketing articles, client briefs, and industry speakers emphasising its importance. 

But when we delve into it, authenticity is an elusive concept.

Let’s start at the beginning 

I worked as a professional DJ and recording artist in my twenties and thirties. Even now, music remains an integral part of my life. I DJ as a side gig, host a monthly radio show, produce music, and run a small record label in my spare time. Because of my obsession, I use holidays to immerse myself in music. Back in 2021, during a two-week trip to Cornwall, one artist/DJ dominated my playlist: Andrew Weatherall.

Now, I understand that many of you might not be familiar with him. He may look like a scruffy geezer, quite different from your typical image of a DJ. But he was a musical genius. 

His death in early 2020 affected me profoundly, more than the death of any other famous figure. While I had the privilege of briefly meeting him a couple of times through my involvement in music, his impact on my relationship with music itself was monumental.

I won’t use this article to list his pioneering musical achievements; others have done it better than I ever could. However, suffice it to say he was a pivotal figure in the emergence of electronic music as a popular art form in the late 1980s and early 90s. Throughout his life, he released a phenomenal amount of music under various aliases and produced and remixed for many other artists, including, famously, Primal Scream’s ‘Screamadelica’ album. 

When he died, many of us connected to electronic music culture felt a profound loss. People across the UK created murals and tributes to honour him. It’s a tradition that continues to this day: in April of 2023, a series of events were held around the UK to commemorate what would have been his 60th birthday, and the same happened again this year. 

One aspect of Weatherall that captivated me was his steadfast refusal to succumb to commercial demands. He never ‘sold out’. 

After the Primal Scream album, he was the hottest young producer in the country. Still, he turned down the lucrative opportunity to work with U2 because he disliked the interference of major labels in his creative process. 

He regularly disbanded his projects just when it looked like they might achieve mainstream success. More often than not, he went on to explore more obscure, abstract and commercially unviable areas of electronic music. While many of his peers, such as Paul Oakenfold and Carl Cox, became superstar DJs, he chose not to grace the stages of spectacle-driven EDM festivals. Instead, he took up residencies at venues like the Golden Lion pub in Todmorden, Yorkshire.

He was witty and erudite, as exemplified by one of his quotes: 

"It's a lot of work, once you go up that slippery showbiz pole, and it would keep me away from what I like, which is making things. I mean, I had a little look in the early nineties. I stood at the bottom of that pole and looked up and thought to myself, 'The view's pretty good. But it's very greasy, and there are a lot of bottoms up there that I might have to brush my lips against. So, maybe I'll give it a miss.’”

While pondering his life during my time in Cornwall, what struck me most was his unwavering dedication to forging his own path and never compromising his artistic vision. 

To me, he epitomised authenticity.

So, when I was asked to create a thought-provoking presentation for my department at work, I embarked on a vision quest to understand authenticity. I read books, explored mind-bending blog posts, and delved into moral philosophy in lengthy YouTube videos. It turns out authenticity is an expansive subject, and I've barely scratched the surface. 

However, one thing has become increasingly clear: authenticity doesn't exist.

While that might seem like a deliberately provocative statement (it’s indeed led to several arguments in the pub), let me explain.

We tend to hold two standard definitions of authenticity. The older one is what I'll call philosophical authenticity, which revolves around the question of what it means to be an authentic person. The second is anthropological authenticity, which emerged during the heyday of Victorian anthropologists studying non-Western societies in the 19th and early 20th centuries. I’ll start there.

Anthropological authenticity

In the anthropological context, authenticity describes experiences or artefacts that are not intended for consumption or trade outside the societies that created them. They are deemed authentic because they are untouched by market forces. The concept originated with the Victorian anthropologists as they set sail to study the tribes and cultures of Africa and the East. 

To illustrate this point, consider two tribal baskets (let’s call them Basket 1 and Basket 2). Basket 1 was made and used for practical purposes such as carrying food, while Basket 2 was made specifically for sale to travellers. Despite being identical in provenance, design, and manufacture, the anthropological construct of authenticity would view Basket 1 as more authentic. 

However, this definition is rooted in a distinctly modern Western perspective. It reflects our unique yearning for things and experiences untainted by commercialism. The cultures themselves didn’t share this, sometimes unaware of commercialism as a concept, or in some cases, actually using the artefacts as currency.

This example shows that authenticity is subjective. It exists solely in the collector's mind; it is not an inherent quality of the object itself. As a result, this definition of authenticity has been discounted within anthropology for decades. 

Nevertheless, the idea that authentic things accurately represent the creator’s intentions and are untainted by mainstream conventions or market forces gained widespread acceptance in culture, particularly in music. 

From Beethoven and Bach to punk, hip-hop, and techno, refusing to compromise your artistic vision to cater to mainstream tastes or for commercial gain (later known as "selling out") was crucial for credibility. 

This peaked with hipster culture that emerged in the early 21st century and epitomised a rejection of mass capitalism. Hipster culture valued uniqueness, history, heritage, and enduring goods. But while punk, hip hop and techno were movements driven by radical approaches to art in which authenticity played a role, hipster culture was primarily a culture of seeking, consuming, and performing authenticity rather than fostering any revolutionary ideas.

Due to its desirability to a hip, young, millennial audience, authenticity started to spring up in every trend report going, landing on the desks of companies like mine, whose job is to create the brands you see around you every day. 

As a result, authenticity became scalable and easily identifiable, leading to the proliferation of "authentic" brand worlds characterised by terms like "artisan," "craft," "small-batch," and "single-lot." The visual cues of exposed brick walls and chalkboard menus in cafes across the globe have become emblematic of this supposedly authentic aesthetic. Authenticity has been commoditised.

Interestingly, the meaning of authenticity has shifted further in recent years: when was the last time you heard anybody face the accusation of 'selling out'? 

The emergence of personal branding and the ability to monetise artistic output has made a marketable personal brand a coveted achievement. Authenticity, once associated with avoiding commercialism, has transformed into a pursuit of mass popularity through social platforms. In the era of influencer culture, brand engagement isn’t seen as selling out but as a measure of artistic success.

From this perspective, authenticity is an illusion. It is a construct that changes with cultural shifts and personal perceptions.

Brands are, by their very nature, made for the market. Even if authenticity did exist, they could only ever give the impression of authenticity. 

Which would make them completely inauthentic.

Philosophical authenticity

Returning to the philosophical concept of authenticity - what it means to live an authentic life or to be an authentic person - we encounter a similar dilemma. 

The debate around what it means to be authentic got going with enlightenment thinkers such as Rousseau, who identified that as we moved from rural to urban living, the emergence of ‘society’ forced people to behave differently to their inner desires to progress.

As a result, the moral ideal of authenticity (being true to who you are) superseded the concept of sincerity (meaning what you say), quickly becoming one of the most highly valued characteristics a person could have. And it went on to permeate Western culture as one of the most desirable states of being. 

There’s only one problem: nobody can agree on what we are. 

Thinkers as varied as Oscar Wilde, Hegel, and Karl Marx have all tried to define humanity’s true nature, but there’s no agreed-upon definition. Other than a relatively basic motivation for self-preservation - to literally keep ourselves alive - it’s impossible to define our true selves. 

It’s comforting to think that inside us all is an authentic self that we could access if only we could strip away all the crud of modern life. But what we perceive as the self isn’t fixed and unchanging. It is shaped by all sorts of factors: genetics, our upbringing, the societies we live in, the communities and cultural institutions around us, and our life experiences. 

The authentic self doesn’t have a coherent philosophical basis, nor is there any basis for it in clinical psychology. 

Even if we could define our true selves, part of living in society involves tempering many urges and thoughts that we might otherwise act on. 

In other words, we must be inauthentic to participate in society.  

The authentic brand? 

But the idea persists that we should both be our authentic selves and that brands should be, too. Part of the allure of influencers is that they can represent a brand’s products authentically. Even though we all know the lives of influencers, as portrayed in social media, are layered with artifice. 

I’m not sure how many businesses want no difference between how they project themselves to the outside world - which is often full of purpose and commitment to progress - and their real motivations, which tend to be towards profit and shareholder value. 

You can see countless examples of this. State Street was fined for underpaying women and minorities after it erected Fearless Girl. Many brands put rainbow flags on their US & European social media profiles during Pride, but not in the countries where it matters the most. Are they being authentic? 

Ultimately, whether as a person or a brand, authenticity is impossible. 

I’d even say it’s not particularly desirable. 

Bringing your ‘authentic self’ to work

Now, there is one caveat to this: the world of work. We’ve all heard about people being able to bring their ‘authentic selves’ to work; nobody should feel like they must hide or mask their cultural heritage, sexuality, gender identity, disability, or any other aspect of their identity when they step foot in the workplace. 

I completely agree with this, if not the language used to describe it. 

But this is quite a new concept. In the past, our work identity was often very different from our ‘real’ identity. Even now, few of us bring everything about ourselves to work. It’s called having a private life. 

But in modern workplaces, we’re trying to create environments where our work identity isn’t wholly separate and artificially constructed. 

And that's different from my argument, which is that a core ‘authentic self’ doesn’t exist. 

A first principles approach to authenticity

My takeaway from all this is twofold. 

First, when confronted with the word "authentic," whether in the workplace or day-to-day life, it's important to unpack and define what that truly means. 

Perhaps it's about being humble, down-to-earth, or transparent. It could be about consistency in how we talk or behave from year to year. 

In advertising, I’d suggest that what we often mean when we say ‘authentic’ is ‘realistic’. For example, when it comes to representing minority communities in adverts, the most respectful way we can work with those communities is to portray their experiences realistically.

People may perceive those ads as being authentic (it is subjective, after all), but that shouldn’t form part of a brief to a director or be used as an objective measure to assess the creative output. 'Realism' is a style that a skilled practitioner can deploy. 'Authenticity' isn't.

Secondly, we should embrace the idea that we are ever-changing and can never fully capture or define our ‘true selves’. Instead, we should focus on identifying and upholding our values personally and within the workplace. 

Rather than authenticity, integrity becomes a guiding principle, allowing us to stay true to what matters most. 

Was Weatherall authentic?

So, in the end, was Andrew Weatherall authentic? 

Well, he was a superlatively talented artist who remained true to his values and vision. I miss him to this day. 

But, having gone on this quest, I now believe he epitomised integrity rather than authenticity. He had it in spades. 

As I look to modern equivalents like Kendrick Lamar or Michaela Coel, who prioritise creative control in staying true to their vision, you can still witness the power of integrity.

So, let's avoid getting too caught up in the illusory pursuit of authenticity. Instead, let's embrace the fluidity of our identities and stay true to our values. 

Or, as the great Mr Weatherall himself used to say, 'Don't let the grubby little opportunists get you down'.