Fake Authenticity

Fake it 'til you make it.

— Alcoholics Anonymous

My stint as a promoter of antiques shows taught me why authenticity is paramount.

Customers pay a premium for it.

Fake authenticity—what trendspotter Heather Corker calls fauxthenticity—isn't good for business, unless your goal is to dupe bargain-hunters.

Fake authenticity, as Corker says, results from brands trying to curate an "unfiltered" image.

The whole effort is ironic from the get-go.

To paper over the irony, marketers will label fake authenticity "aspirational."

It's a sleight-of-hand that lets them live with embracing phony claims like:

• We're industry-leading. (Not really, but we could be.)
• We're customer-centric. (Not really, but we could be.)
• We're global. (Not really, but we could be.)
• We're socially responsible. (Not really, but we could be.)

Marketers, I've got news for you: Your fake authenticity resides in the world of "alternative facts," alongside the king of France, colorless green dreams, and trickle-down economics. It's what antiques dealers call a repro, a counterfeit meant only to deceive.

The best customers are too smart for that.

We Will Survive

It's even worse than it appears, but it's all right.

― Jerry Garcia

Every day brings more dismal news.

Tornadoes and floods ravage small towns...

Uber's CEO is actually Beelzebub... 

A hostile foreign government has handed our presidency to a Dalek... 

My Facebook account has been hacked.

Thank goodness, philosophy provides the way to deal with problems.

The Ancient Greek and Roman stoics taught that human shipwreck is inevitable, and must be borne with dignity. Anger and grief over your fate is unbecoming when you accept that disaster targets everything alive.

The American pragmatists, 2,500 years later, taught that the goal of steady growth and improvement colors all human actions, and that ingenuity and hard work will yield eventual victory.

A sensible middle way lies between the stoics' pessimism of the pragmatists' optimism, says contemporary philosopher John Lachs.

"The problem of pragmatists is that they never give up striving," he writes in Stoic Pragmatism. "The problem of stoics is that they give it up too soon.

"If we could combine the two views―vigorously seeking improvement so long as our energies have a chance to prevail and graciously surrendering when the world strikes us down―we would have the makings of a sound philosophy."

Sounds right to me. How about you?

Brand Name Poetry

In 1955, a consultant to Ford Motor Company asked poet Marianne Moore to come up with a name for the company's new car.

He told the poet his list of 300 names was an "embarrassing pedestrianism," and that Ford needed a name to convey "some visceral feeling of elegance, fleetness, advanced features and design."

Moore supplied these names:

Accipiter, Aero Faire, Aerofee, Aeroterre, Andante con Moto, Anticipator, Arcenciel, Bullet Cloisoné, Bullet Lavolta, Comme Il Faire, Fée Aiglette, Fée Rapide, Ford Faberge, Hurricane, Impeccable, Intelligent Bullet, Intelligent Whale, Mongoose Civique, Pastelogram, Regna Racer, Resilient Bullet, Symmechromatic, Thunderblender, Thunder Crester, Utopian Turtletop, and Varsity Stroke.

In the end, Ford didn't choose any of Moore's names; nor any of the 18,000 supplied by its ad agency. The company launched instead with its original in-house name: Edsel.

With my partner David James, I recently went through a similar exercise to name our new agency. 

With help from a third writer, our list of names included:

Benchmark Marketing, Cranium Marketing, Criteria Marketing, Dive Team Marketing, Fearless Marketing, Fresh Face Marketing, Gutsy Marketing, Jungle Cat Marketing, Lean Mean Marketing, Lucky Dog Marketing, Marketing Engine, Marketing Maniacs, Noir Marketing, Outcome Marketing, Playbook Marketing, Rampant Marketing, Road Runner Marketing, Rugged Marketing, Runaway Marketing, Solutions Marketing, Stalwart Marketing, Touchstone Marketing, Trained Minds Marketing, Untamed Marketing, Venturesome Marketing, and Wildcat Marketing.

Like Ford, in the end we launched with the a "pedestrianism," Bob & David James.

Let's hope we have better success than Ford did with Edsel.

Idiocy is Baked In

The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses
for execution by idiots.

― Herman Wouk

In a thematic scene in The Caine Mutiny, the worldly Lieutenant Keefer explains how the Navy works to a fresh-faced ensign:

“The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you are not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one. All the shortcuts and economies and common-sense changes that your native intelligence suggests to you are mistakes. Learn to quash them."

Most 21st century businesses are, of course, designed in the same fashion.

"After nearly a century of effort, the industrial system has created the worker-proof factory," Seth Godin says in The Icarus Deception.

"It’s okay if the person assembling your Domino’s pizza or Apple iPhone doesn’t care. The system cares. The system measures every movement, every bit of output, so all the tolerances are in order.

"It’s okay if the person at the bank doesn’t care—the real work is done by an ATM or a spreadsheet.

"We’ve systematized and mechanized every step of every process.

"By eliminating 'personal' from frontline labor, the industrial system ensures that it can both maintain quality and use ever-cheaper (and ever-fewer) workers."

At this moment, while "surprise and delight" are on every executive's tongue at large businesses, truth be told, the system can't tolerate them.

They cut down too much on productivity.

That threatens shareholder value.

Those master plans "designed by geniuses for execution by idiots" that we call corporations spell opportunity for entrepreneurs.

Because if today's customers really crave "surprise and delight," they'll never find them when they do business with large businesses.

Idiocy is baked in.

La La Land

PricewaterhouseCoopers has owned up to this week's flub at the Oscars, "one of the most infamous gaffes in the show's history."

Call it my confirmation bias, but I take it as proof we live in the post-competence era.

Americans are living in the disengaged state of La La Land.

That low-low bar spells opportunity for entrepreneurs.

In the post-competence era, customers can buy services with impunity from overseas providers. From graphic designers in Poland, copywriters in Thailand, telemarketers in Ireland, web developers in Swaziland.

Their work isn't great, but it works: more than you can say about the work of providers in La La Land.

"There’s an abundance of things to buy and people to hire," says Seth Godin in The Icarus Deception. "What’s scarce is trust, connection, and surprise."

If you deliver those three things—trust, connection, and surprise—customers will flock to you, stick with you, and pay a premium.

Because they're underwhelmed by providers in faraway lands, and sick of the ones in La La Land.