In doing an interview with the Belgian financial newspaper De Tijd for my speech on Authenticity & Marketing at the Stichting Marketing Congress in Ghent, the journalist asked me why now — why is authenticity so important now, when the word and concept has been around for so long?
In answering, I expressed it in a different way than I ever had before. Authenticity began in the philosophical realm and stayed there for hundreds of years, migrating only slowly into the personal realm as people read these philosophers (Rousseau, Camus, Heidigger, Sartre, et al) and applied their thoughts to their lives. Only when other philosophers and critics (Trilling, Taylor, etc.) took this philosophical thought and made it more digestible for the layman did it gain widespread currency, and in the 1960s entered into the realm of popular culture, where people still really only thought of it in terms of people.
In the ensuing decades, however, as more and more people thought in terms of authenticity, it was only natural that they moved from who they were to what they purchased to construct their identities, the concept finally entering the realm of the commercial. And thus was born authenticity as a consumer sensibility.
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My comment is not so much about this article in particular, more so to the surge of collective authenticity in consumer offerings. I have read and learned much from Joe and Jim over teh years, but when I read about Crowdsourcing from Jeff Howe did I really began to understand the power of Authenticity in the market place. It goes beyond Co-Creation as the consumer being the action to the consumer being the stager for production to be the action. Truly this must be as authentic as you can get when those who purchase are the creators. This is really originally authentic… sorry pun intended.
Joe, thanks for sharing the progression. Interesting to track the impact of thought to belief to practice.