Authenticity is built into the experience

Authenticity gets circled in brand workshops, underlined in strategy decks, and offered as the answer to almost any marketing problem. Used that way, the word tells us very little. What should a team actually do differently on Monday?

Start with the distance between what a company says and what someone experiences. A friendly campaign can lead to a confusing checkout. A promise of personal service can end in a support loop. Those are brand decisions, even when the brand team never sees them.

Revisiting this subject in 2026, I would put more of the work there: in the decisions people encounter after the message has done its job.

Give people something they can check

The original argument for authenticity leaned heavily on access to information. People could compare a company’s advertising with reviews, employee accounts, and their own experience. That remains a useful starting point. But access to more information does not automatically make the truth easier to find.

A practical response is to make your own claims specific. If a product is easier to use, show the task it simplifies. If a service saves time, explain what you measured. If you promise to stand behind a purchase, make the return policy easy to find and easy to understand.

Give the reader enough detail to judge the claim. An honest limitation can be more useful than another confident adjective.

AI makes the boundary worth spelling out

AI adds another question to brand communication: what is being presented as real? There is a meaningful difference between using a tool to explore a layout and presenting an invented customer as someone who used your product. The team needs a clear boundary before either reaches an audience.

Dove offers a specific example. In its 2024 Keep Beauty Real campaign, it committed to never using AI to create or distort women’s images. The pledge connects a production decision to the brand’s longstanding position on beauty. Dove’s Keep Beauty Real commitment.

My takeaway is to define what your audience is being asked to believe, then protect it. A customer story should describe a real experience. A product demonstration should represent what the product can do. Someone needs to own that standard, regardless of how the material was made.

Put the promise into the business

Patagonia was an example in the original article, and the details matter. In September 2022, the Chouinard family transferred the company’s voting stock to the Patagonia Purpose Trust and its nonvoting stock to the Holdfast Collective. Patagonia remains a for-profit company; profits left after reinvestment are distributed to support environmental work. Patagonia’s explanation of its ownership.

I read that as an example of a commitment expressed through how a business is governed. It is not proof that every decision the company makes is beyond criticism, or that another business needs the same structure. It shows how a stated value can be given practical force.

There are smaller versions of this work. A company that promises accessibility can budget for testing with disabled users. A company that promises clarity can rewrite its pricing page and remove surprise charges. The useful question is which decision your stated value changes.

Stay close to the experience

Understanding people takes more than naming an audience in a presentation. Read the support requests. Watch someone attempt the task. Ask where they expected one thing and got another. Make room for answers that complicate the story you wanted to tell.

Then connect what you learn to someone who can act on it. If customers repeatedly misunderstand a fee, the product, marketing, and support teams need to work through the same problem. A warmer email template will only get them so far.

This is where empathy becomes useful: a clearer explanation, a corrected charge, a flow that no longer leaves someone stranded. People should be able to feel the difference in the service.

Make consistency part of the work

Before shipping a campaign or a feature, ask what it promises, where that promise is tested, and who can fix the gap. Keep asking after launch. When something falls short, explain what happened and what will change.

That is the version of authenticity I find useful. It gives designers, marketers, and product teams a shared responsibility: make a promise the business can keep, then keep improving the experience behind it.