In marketing and public relations, the word “authenticity” has become a frequent buzzword. Google the word and you’ll find thousands of marketing-related references to the importance of authenticity, and thousands of definitions.

Like so many buzzwords before it, authenticity has taken on an unfortunate Zelig-like quality: Whoever is using the word defines it to fit his or her specific purposes. It’s tempting to say that’s an acceptable practice. After all, if beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, then who am I to say there’s a better, higher standard that should be a shared principle in marketing and public relations?

Well, there should be a shared definition of authenticity in marketing and public relations. Truth may be in the eye of the beholder. But authenticity is not.

In everyday life, even someone who violently disagree with another person’s opinions often realizes that this other person whose views they despise is authentically representing what they believe. How can this be? Because authenticity is not the same as truth.

Far too much of the debate about marketing, advertising and public relations centers on determining the “truth” and then excoriating a brand, an agency or a company when they fail to present the “truth” in communicating with an audience.

This is the wrong debate. Certainly, facts are essential in communications and marketing. But that’s not the same as authenticity. It’s been more than 50 years since Darrell Huff demonstrated this principle in his book, How to Lie with Statistics. One of Huff’s central points was that “facts” many people agree upon could be interpreted in wildly different ways to come to dramatically different conclusions.

At the time Huff published his book, this was both a revealing, provocative statement and something that many commentators felt was accurate by a simple gut check. Any parent who has separated children after a fight (or any of us who can remember being in such a fight early in life) can agree that the same set of facts can be interpreted so differently as to leave you scratching your head as to what really happened.

The secret for any company, agency or cause is to understand that this is a condition of our work — a shared set of facts can lead to different conclusions. The challenge is to apply this understanding to create an authentic brand, message and story that resonates with the audiences we want to reach.

For an intended audience to see, hear or experience authenticity, much more than “facts” or “truth” must be present. Authenticity must begin with the facts and incorporate context, character and other attributes that enable an audience to judge the story being shared as “authentic,” meaning rooted in fact and also representative of how the audience would expect that brand, company or cause to behave in a given situation.

It’s human nature when sharing our version of a story to tell it in a way that is most flattering to us. There is no audience in the world that would expect anything different.

At the same time, there is no place for “spin” or lying in sharing an authentic story in marketing and public relations. The audience determines what looks, sounds and feels right in the story shared by a brand, company or cause. For those of us in marketing and public relations, it’s a challenging combination of art and science to determine and then present our authentic story that resonates with our audience.

This is the deepest secret in successful marketing and public relations: Authenticity is the secret sauce that enables a brand or company or cause to interpret a situation and present its story in a way that is both flattering to the organization sharing the story, and successful in engaging the audiences the organization wants to reach.
Paul Furiga is the president and founder of WordWrite Communications, a fast-growing Pittsburgh public relations agency that employs the ageless power of storytelling to deliver results for its clients. You can contact Paul and learn more about WordWrite at: http://www.wordwritepr.com

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