Amazon.com: Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want: Books: James H. Gilmore,B. Joseph, II Pine

I'm very behind in my blogging and I'm trying to use the holiday weekend to get caught up a little. I've also been using the time off to catch up on my reading and this is one of the books I've been catching up on as well. As you know, I was a big fan of their original writings on this topic, when The Experience Economy since it was first published in 1999.

Their latest book deals with being authentic and the role of authenticity in today's business world. It's a big issue with a lot of attention these days and like Pine & Gilmore, we believe that it will continue to be important as we move into 2008.

As usual with their books, it's chock full of lots of good examples and discussions about what authenticity means and how brands can use the idea of being authentic to reach their audiences. But they also point out that companies not behaving in an authentic way will have to face the very public reactions today. (See Everyone's a Critic for more on this.)

We think that authenticity will become even more important in the future for brands. As brands jump onto various bandwagons (being green for example), the consumer will be looking to see how real they are about their statements. If you haven't seen it yet, take a look at Dove's Onslaught Film - The Backlash on PSFK to see one current example of a brand being held up to its own standards.

As I continue reading, I'll post more from the book and I would recommend adding it to your Christmas reading list!

Contrived. Disingenuous. Phony. Inauthentic. Do your customers use any of these words to describe what you sell or how you sell it? If so, welcome to the club. Inundated by fakes and sophisticated counterfeits, people increasingly see the world in terms of real or fake. They would rather buy something real from someone genuine, rather than something fake from some phony. When deciding to buy, consumers judge an offering s (and a company s) authenticity as much as if not more than price, quality, and availability.

In Authenticity, James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II argue that, to trounce rivals, companies must grasp, manage, and excel at rendering authenticity. Through examples from a wide array of industries as well as government, non-profit, education, and religious sectors, the authors show how to manage customers perception of authenticity by:

Recognizing how businesses fake it

Appealing to the five different genres of authenticity

Charting how to be true to self and what you say you are

Crafting and implementing business strategies for rendering authenticity

The first to explore what authenticity really means for businesses and how companies can approach it both thoughtfully and thoroughly, this book is a must-read for any organization seeking to fulfill consumers intensifying demand for the real deal.

Link: Amazon.com: Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want: Books: James H. Gilmore,B. Joseph, II Pine.

Link: Experience Manifesto: Authenticity.

Link: Experience Manifesto: Prediction 1: Authenticity is the Key.