As content and influencer marketing continue to spiral up, this post from 2015 may be even more relevant today.
Over the last decade the digital marketing business has lived through a personality crisis. On the one hand there's the relentless march of programmatic automation. On the other, native advertising — or sponsored content or branded entertainment or whatever else we're calling the opposite of commoditization. Throughout this whole tedious game of semantic Twister, we've ignored the quality we should all be striving to embody; a quality that strengthens customer commitment, forges employee loyalty and gets us all closer to purpose-driven business marketing.
The quality - and the word - we've been grasping for is authenticity.
This week's Drift is proudly underwritten by AppNexus. Join AppNexus at this year's Yield Executive Summit, taking place on Wednesday, September 28, in New York City. We look forward to an exclusive day of discussions and presentations with top influencers in digital advertising as we examine the essential tools that every publisher must have for successful monetization and digital acceleration.
What we all do for a living may remain ridiculously complicated, but the answer may be just this simple. What consumers want from their bourbon, their coffee houses, their granola and their politicians - authenticity - may be exactly what marketers and agencies and publishers desperately crave in our world.
Whether you make blue jeans or offer DMP services, being authentic doesn't mean that you're the only one who makes what you make or does what you do. It means being clear and open about your process, your motivations, your beliefs. No matter how right or left brain your company is, there is something authentic and genuine about how you build your product or deliver your service; why you're in business at all; and in what you believe as a company. Or at least there should be.
Look at two of the world's most powerful technology companies - Apple and Google. Despite hugely complicated technology stacks and a sometimes confusing morass of products (most of which, in the case of Apple, are mass produced overseas), both companies still seem authentic to the customer. "Don't' Be Evil." "Think Different." "Designed by Apple in California." Should any of our companies aim for less?
The thing about authenticity is that you can't outsource it. Too often the world-class engineers who invented your product or the visionary CEO who got the company funded simply hand off the job to the marketing professionals, the copywriters or the ad agency. Too often those who sell to and service our customers are given talking points or white papers and left to fend for themselves.
Authentic isn't what you say. It's who you are. So who are you, then?
