GUD BLOG: SINGLE POST
The Importance of Authenticity
Real mayonnaise isn’t something most people haven’t ever had these days. The paranoia over raw eggs and the effort required to make it oneself have put it off most people’s radar screens. So there’s a big market for the shelf stable, mass produced alternative. Taking it a step further is Miracle Whip, from which any hint of mayo has been removed then re-engineered and replaced with…something. Even Miracle Whip doesn’t brand itself as mayo; they call themselves “dressing,” which I think properly sets expectations for what one is about to buy.
The reason I’m thinking of Miracle Whip, which I haven’t had in ages and wouldn’t buy for any reason short of playing a practical joke on someone, is that I saw one of their new ads last night during the Oscars. It was a shockingly honest ad, and as hard as it is for me to contemplate, it showcases how Miracle Whip is a true, authentic product.
Miracle Whip is, of course, fake mayo. But their portrayal of the product is honest and authentic. It would be impossible to feel scammed by their promotion. One guy in their new ad says it tastes “like lotion, but sweet” and goes on to posit the question of why anyone would want that on a sandwich — this, in an ad for that very product. Obviously, the marketing guys are still marketing, still sending us a message. But they’re being forthright, building that message around people’s real perceptions and opinions instead of what some guy in a conference room thinks are people’s perceptions.
Interestingly, the Oscars themselves were full of moments of inauthenticity, which also illustrate the point I’m about to make. Melissa Leo took home the Academy Award for best supporting actress. Every newspaper on the planet predicted it. And disturbingly enough, Leo launched her own set of ads in Hollywood trade publications to campaign for the award. So how the hell is it that when she took the stage to accept, her speech was full of long, melodramatic pauses and brief outbursts of surprise as though she’d never contemplated this happening to her? She served up a heaping platter of disingenuous fakery, an accomplishment of high drama from an accomplished dramatic actress.
I, for one, will probably avoid every movie she ever makes from this day forward.
Why?
Because I’m part of that generation that’s grown up with 3,000 marketing messages thrust in our faces each day — on billboards, over the radio waves, on the television, on the internet, in my newspaper, and now, I’ve discovered, on the underside of some airplanes’ tray tables. I’m absolutely sick of some out-of-touch executive trying to push crap on me I don’t need, and I’m sick of certain celebrities pretending to be humble when they’re anything but, and I’m sick of piss poor food produced on an assembly line billing itself as some sort of natural, holistic answer to all my food prayers.
Lame, old school marketing doesn’t really impact my life, I suppose, so I simply may be a petty bastard, but it’s hard to deny that this constant barrage of messaging that lacks any credibility or authenticity is both irritating and omnipresent. Thus, it’s worth offering some commentary on the subject.
Last year, Todd wrote a pretty compelling rant about the absurdity of the marketing campaign conducted by Old Forester bourbon. Their branding folks had concocted a special Black Friday cocktail made from whiskey and 2 kinds of soda pop then encouraged people to rush home to drink it after shopping. The bourbon itself is fine, but in desperately manufacturing an angle to get people’s attention, they created something nonsensical. I have no doubt that they have found a niche for their product, but no one associates Old Forester with Black Friday, and I have to wonder if they wouldn’t be more effective simply being a bit more honest about their product.
People have been able to express themselves far and wide through YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, email, mass texting, and so on. We can find real people saying real things; and we can find real people saying fake things; and we can find fake people dressing up real cats in Barbie costumes and videotaping it.
The point, of course, is that transparent communication is all around us now. There’s a lot of static and bullshit as well, but that doesn’t mean the real thing isn’t out there and easy to find. And in a universe of people empowered to be their own restaurant critics on Yelp or their own movie critics on Rotten Tomatoes or their own wine critics on Eric Asimov’s blog, why do so many marketing executives still think the way to market to 21- to 40-year-olds is through pushing absurd messaging dripping with cow manure? Even 50- and 60-year-old consumers are moving to this style of communication and are adopting a lot of “younger” behaviors.
To some extent, I share a profession with these folks, and while I’m hardly innovating on a significant scale in the world of marketing, I’d like to think I have a bit more of a clue. Our jobs shouldn’t be to push something on people that they don’t want or need and to sell it with cheap tricks; our jobs are to connect what we offer to what consumers need. To do that, you need to understand their needs, their objections to your product, and who will actually buy it versus who is a lost cause.
That’s what Miracle Whip did so well, I think. I’m sure there are branding consultants and marketing gurus out there cringing, thinking to themselves, “You’ve surrendered your brand!” and “Why would you ever say anything negative about yourself?” But Miracle Whip realized that the conversation is already out there and that they cannot, no matter how much they want, control that conversation. All they can do is be a part of it and influence it.
So today, there are people going to their website to get a free sample of Miracle Whip (see the ad itself above). People like me who already hated it probably were never going to buy it and were always going to mock it, so why win us over? Instead, they’re going to just put their product out there “as is” and try to match it up with the people who really like it. They acknowledge the rest of us but they disarm us a bit by being honest enough to admit the truth about their product. Brilliant, I think.
Beyond Miracle Whip’s and Old Forester’s marketing campaigns, what does this have to do with food and drink?
Everything.
Authenticity is crucial not just in advertising and Oscar acceptance speeches. It’s how we form trust in someone or something: One must be credible to engender a relationship. Consider the Oscar show itself: It was widely reportedly the producers were going after “younger demographic,” so they injected iPhone references into the script and found two young, beautiful, charismatic hosts. But no one ever bothered to tell the writers that their crude attempts to mimic youth culture were destined to fail because they clearly never took the time to learn anything about it.
This morning, everyone’s talking about how the Oscars were a yawn, and I’d bet just about anything that rather than secure more viewers for next year, the producers simply created another group of cynics who will anticipate more failure from the Oscars next year.
Similarly, when wineries proclaim points, a lot of newer wine lovers and true aficionados have begun to balk at the whole concept, almost seeing the points as a sign of poor quality rather than good quality. Why? Because everyone knows that winemakers have manipulated their wines over the years to appeal to the palates of big name tasters in the media (Robert Parker, et al) rather than to their own palates. I want to trust the winemaker who knows the region and the grapes, not some overpaid critic with a singular notion of “good wine” who dumbs things down to a numerical scale. For a case in point, see the stunningly absurd James Suckling below:
The term typicité is often used to describe a wine’s particular uniqueness or charm, which itself generally relates to its terroir — the sense of “place.” Climate, soil, et cetera. In a tasting of older wines the other week, the wine that had everyone frowning was the wine had no sense of place. It was big and oily and loaded with a lotiony sweetness that I have no doubt the hater from the Miracle Whip ad would loathe (and perhaps conversely that all the Miracle Whip lovers would enjoy). I couldn’t have guessed that it was barolo if I’d sat there all night racking my brain. If I want wine that tastes like it was produced in a chemistry lab, why even bother labeling or growing grapes anywhere but California or Bordeaux? Engineers can make wine that tastes a certain way anywhere.
But it doesn’t ring true when you drink it. Like Melissa Leo’s speech, such a wine may immediately be gratifying because there’s an element of novelty and excitement to it, but over time, that fades and becomes burdensome — because these things lack honesty and integrity.
There’s no doubt that “authenticity” is a nebulous concept, that it can be abused, that there are entirely inauthentic ads that work, and so on. And saying that one needs authenticity doesn’t necessarily mean spontaneity – it’s quite possible to be clever and smart due to diligent thought and/or planning while still being genuine. But increasingly, I think that marketing professionals, winemakers, food producers, writers, Oscar producers, and just about everyone else are going to need to get used to the idea that the internet (among other things) has created a space in which authenticity (real or perceived) is valued over perfect taglines or focus group-tested flavors.
Strange that Miracle Whip inspired me to reflect on that, but it just shows that when you’re doing it right, you can reach just about anyone.
2011.02.28 Evan Hansen at 7:46 am
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3 Responses to The Importance of Authenticity
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Hi Evan, like what you said regarding the need for companies to be involved with social media to influence the conversations that are going to be had, regardless of their presence. I quoted you in my blog, which in looking into the Miracle Whip commercials, I found out that the “consumers” in the spot were actually actors. http://blog.techimage.com/?p=675
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