"Authentic" Is the Most Dishonest Word in Marketing.

Any brand that has to tell you it's authentic is not.

Read that again. I'll wait.

I've spent 13+ years in advertising. I have written for brands you've put in your fridge. And I have sat in more rooms than I can count where someone leans back and says, "We just want it to feel authentic."

Everybody nods.

Nobody asks what it means.

Methinks that's the problem.

The word that ate the room

"Authentic" used to mean something. It meant real. Not faked. The genuine article.

Now it means "please don't notice we're selling."

It shows up in every brief. Every deck. Every brand platform with a mood board of someone laughing at a salad.

And here's the weird part. The more a brand says it, the less I believe it.

Because authentic is a quality, not a claim.

A funny person doesn't announce they're funny. A kind person doesn't hold a press conference about their kindness. If you have to say it out loud, you're already in trouble.

But here's the thing

I don't think marketers are lying on purpose.

I think we grabbed a word that felt safe and used it until it went soft.

"Authentic" is the perfect brief word because it can't be wrong. Nobody ever got fired for asking for authentic. Nobody can say you missed it, because nobody ever defined it.

It's a comfortable lie. We all agreed to it. We all invoiced for it. 🤪

And the result is a very specific kind of content. You know the one.

The founder in a hoodie, looking off camera, "being vulnerable."

The shaky handheld video that was storyboarded for three weeks.

The caption that starts with "Real talk."

That isn't authentic. That's a costume of authentic. Which is worse, because now you're lying AND you're trying to look like you aren't.

What people actually respond to

Here's what I've noticed, and I'm just some guy clicking buttons on the internet, so weigh it accordingly.

People don't respond to authentic.

They respond to specific.

Specific is the thing that makes a reader think, "Wait, they get it. They've been in my meeting. They know what my Tuesday looks like."

A vague line says: "We care about our customers."

A specific line says something only a company that actually pays attention could say.

You can't fake specific. You either know the detail or you don't. And readers can smell the difference from across the room.

Specific is what's left over when you stop performing and start paying attention.

Authentic is an output, not an input

This is the part I'd tattoo somewhere if I had room. (I have a lot of tattoos. The real estate is getting tight.)

Authentic is what happens AFTER you do the work. It is not a place you start.

If you start with "let's be authentic," you get a performance of authenticity. You get the hoodie.

If you start with "what is true about us, and what do our people actually care about," you get something real. Then somebody calls it authentic later, because they felt it.

You don't aim at the word.

You aim at the truth, and the word shows up on its own.

Or it doesn't. And that's fine too. Nobody needs the word. They just need the thing.

Why brands avoid the real thing

Real is risky.

Real means a point of view. A point of view means somebody out there doesn't like you.

Real might mean a joke that not everyone gets. A stance that a few people push back on. A sentence that a legal team would circle in red.

So we reach for "authentic" instead. It lets you gesture at honesty without actually risking any.

It's honesty with the edges sanded off.

That's what a lot of brand voice turns out to be, honestly. Smooth. Safe. A voice you could hand to any company and nobody would notice the swap.

If your copy would still make sense with a competitor's logo on it, it isn't authentic. It's interchangeable. Those are very different things.

What to actually do

Okay. You've got a deck due Thursday and the brief has the A-word in it. Here's what I'd do.

Ban the word in the room. Not forever. Just for the project. Make everyone say what they mean instead. "Authentic" turns into "we want to sound like a human who's actually met our customers." Now you have something you can write.

Collect real detail. Talk to the people who buy the thing. Read the support tickets. Listen to how customers describe your product when you're not in the room. Steal their words. They're better than yours.

Pick a side. One real opinion beats ten safe ones. Decide what you believe that your competitors would never say, and say it.

Do the cover-the-logo test. Cover the logo. Could this be anybody? If yes, keep going.

Let someone else say it. If the work is any good, your audience will call it authentic on their own. That's the only version that counts.

The point

Authentic is not something you claim.

It's something you get called, if you earn it, by people who have no reason to flatter you.

The best compliment a piece of writing ever gets isn't "that felt authentic." It's silence, followed by someone forwarding it to a friend with "this is exactly it."

Skip the word. Do the work.

If you want to see what I mean by work that sounds like it has a pulse, here's some of it. I'll let you decide whether it earns the A-word.

(Please don't use it in the comments. I'll know.)

Please and thank you. 😘