Authenticity:Is it real or is it marketing??

Novelia Asita MrananiI Putu Septian Adi Prayuda

New Person, New Style!

• Gordon McMaster as a CEO of Hunks Engines• Marty Echt as a new VP of marketing• Paula Marchesi as a director of promotions, did not

really like working with marty• Carla Meyer as a head of marketing communication• Pete Richard as a head of PR group• Matthew Wyck as a head of digital marketing group• Fiona Napoli as a writer in the communications group

Marty too Salty

• Some very good people in the marketing department felt out of place

• Employees throughout the company who had done terrific work for years were feeling dismissed, censored, marginalized

• There had even been complaints about Marty’s use of salty language in the office

Hunks Lost Authenticity

• Marty sees that sales are down. • He concludes that the Hunsk motorcycle

brand is no longer vital because the brand has lost its authenticity.

• The problem is that Marty believes that he needs to change the Hunsk organization itself, not just the conventional marketing functions.

Marty’s Question

“How can we be an authentic company if we have marketing people who refuse to even be a

passenger on one of our bikes??”

Marty want Hunks “go back to the roots!” Be an authentic company, not just a company that

have authentic brand.

Authentic Brand

• Some would consider authenticity to be concrete or objective, rooted in the nature of the product, but increasingly it is seen to be existential, or based on the consumer’s subjective experience (Kolar and Zabkar 2010).

• Other approaches are also used for categorising authenticity, including indexical (innate in the product) or iconic (symbolically representative) (Grayson and Martinec 2004).

Elements of Authentic Brand

http://360comm.com

Authentic Organization

Brand VS Organizational AuthenticityBrand Authenticity depends on consumers’ perceptions of a product. For a brand, authenticity is the perception of ‘real’ness. Hunsk motorcycles no longer feel real. The product/brand has lost its authenticity because consumers no longer experience Hunsk motorcycles as real. They feel a disconnect between what they experience and what they expect or hope to experience. Marty’s challenge is to restore (customers’ perceptions of) the product’s authenticity as they-the customers- experience it.

Organizational Authenticity depends on stakeholders perceptions of the congruence between who the organization is, how it presents itself, and how it acts. An organization isn’t authentic when it has the same attributes as its brands. It is authentic when its identity, image and action are congruent.

Branding is A Creative Process

• Brands/products do not automatically inherit the qualities of the organization’s identity. The attributes of a brand are not derived or directly descended from the organization’s identity.

• The attributes of a brand are designed inthrough the marketing process.

• Brand authenticity is ‘rendered’ through skillful marketing.

• Organizational authenticity is sustained through skillful management.

Terimakasih