David Weinberger, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and author of Small Pieces Loosesly Joined, wrote a fictional case study for the current (March) issue of Harvard Business Review. The piece, called Authenticity: Is It Real or Is It Marketing?, raises some important questions. For example (though Weinberger doesn’t ask this specific question), can a fat, conservative, 55 year old dude who hates skateboarders and skateboarding effectively market and sell skateboards to riders in their teens and 20s? His piece, about a fictional motorcycle manufacturer called Hunsk, raises this basic question, as Hunsk is an ailing brand that needs reviving. The current Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is on an authenticity campaign that ruffles feathers in every direction. When the CMO asks a group of gathered employees ‘How many of you have bikes and ride them regularly?’, very few hands go up and none enthusiastically. He knows he has a problem.
Living the Brand
The point is that you can’t fake it. A few weeks ago I wrote about the business of the Grateful Dead as an example of what some call Radical Marketing. Some of the companies discussed in ‘Radical Marketing’ may practice radical marketing but they don’t necessarily practice Radical Design. There is a difference. The Dead practiced radical design, which is when the customers are co-present in the design process itself, or actually design things for themselves, and this makes marketing, per se, something of an afterthought.
Radical Design at Decathlon Sports
Decathlon Sports is a French company that makes bikes, skis, canoes, kayaks, scuba gear, etc, and is know as a design-driven but affordable sports brand in Europe. I was at a design conference when Philippe Picaud, Decathlon’s Director of Design, was asked how they produced SO many cool designs each year (like the award winning ‘Quechua 2 Second Tent’)? His response was classic Radical Design, design that makes marketing easy.
He said that Decathlon’s design studios are located on the second floor of retail stores, where there is an open floor plan between the first and second floor. Designers do their work in open view of customers, who are strongly encouraged to come up and talk with designers and tell them what they do and do not like about a product. Further, the design studios for specific sports are located in those regions (ski gear is made in the Alps, scuba gear near the Mediterranean, etc) so that the actual enthusiasts are the ones buying and often living in that part of the country. And finally, Decathlon’s designers are also enthusiasts in the sport for which they design, in the area of the country where that sport is done, which makes them part of the brand.
That is, they are living in the brand.
You can’t fake that. Authenticity simply is.
The Butcher
N.B. The 2-second tent from Decathlon.
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And the more we expect and demand authenticity, the more the sock puppets and weasels stand out.
“Authenticity simply is.” I like that a lot. Can authenticity be taught? I think it can be pointed out - “hey, you know it’s actually *easier* to just tell the truth about what’s going on than to come up with a story you think we’ll buy, and then have to do damage control.”
What about scale? Is there a size at which a company cannot realistically be authentic?
Thanks for this Julie. You are absolutely right that scale is a huge issue. Think Starbucks, and Whole Foods. Great brands that embody lots of groovy values, which make them brands that I really like. But Starbucks’ 12,000th store or Whole Foods’ gazillion square foot store in Atlanta just don’t have the same ring as the little health food store that WF started as in Austin and the Pike Place market in Seattle where Starbucks started. Somewhere in the process is a place for restraint and leadership. Where leadership becomes moral and spiritual leadership at an important level… It begs, I guess, the simple yet difficult question of: How much money is enough?