What Price Authenticity?

Authenticity is one of the great marketing buzzwords of the day, but walking around the preview of the Damien Hirst show made me wonder what we actually mean by that word.

This photograph (taken from the preview catalogue) shows a number of the works being created. On closer inspection, you may notice that the artist himself is not involved in the process. He makes no secret of this and I'm not here to debate whether that makes him an artist or a designer, but it raises an interesting dilemma.


This sketch and many others were exhibited in what was by far my favourite room of the preview show. It seems to me that it is clearly authentic Hirst. It's his sketching, his writing, his imagination and his signature on the front. I'd love to own it but can't afford it.

Oranges and Lemons is the piece that emerged from that sketch. It's got butterflies, manufactured diamonds, his signature (on the back) and it's clearly inspired by his imagination. I'm less sure that it's what I would think of as authentic, so I don't really want to own it and, anyway, I can't afford it either.

Received wisdom would have us believe that the more authentic something is, the more highly prized it is. But there's more to it than that. It's what the customer base determines to be authentic that actually counts and tomorrow we shall see what value is attached to authenticity. The guide price for Oranges and Lemons is £300,000 to £500,000. The guide price for the sketch is £20,000 to £30,000. Are butterflies and manufactured diamonds really that authentic?

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Recombinant Culture?

The mela is a multicultural celebration that is "all about bringing communities together and understanding different cultures." I have attended some which featured the food of many lands as well as their music and dance. Today's fitted that bill too, but its unique apogee was an attempt to bring communities together via that renowned multicultural phenomenon - the Abba tribute band.


Frida's developed a Scottish accent and Agnetha has, well, just developed. But worse than that, they just remind me that imitation is not all that flattering. The mash-ups and collaboration of web 2.0 are great if leading to improvement, but a recent return visit to the Cans Festival suggests that dilution is the more likely outcome. It takes more than effort to be original.

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Don't Make The Straight Man Funny.

So here's the second Microsoft ad in very long form and it's funnier. It has more characters and a better script, though I'm not sure what it has to do with Microsoft per se. Yet they still screw it up at the end by trying to get Bill Gates to be wacky (and I'm sure that will feature in the thirty second version). When he's the straight man here, he's funny. But, as with all marketing, when you try to suggest that something or someone is different from how we know them to be, it just gets embarrassing.

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Damien Hirst Marketing.

Today at Sotheby's preview of the big Damien Hirst sale, I noticed that many of the encased pieces such as "Here Today, Gone Tomorow" (pictured above) were bigger than ever. It was interesting then to read Hirst's words in the catalogue.

The horror is them getting thrown away, for any artist I think. You want your work on the wall for people to see. I think that's one of the reasons I put boxes around things, so that you can't fit it in the loft/attic.

Does your product/service have a box?

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Perceptions Are Illogical.

Changing well-established perceptions is a difficult marketing task and there's been lots of online discussion about the merit of Microsoft's new advertising campaign. But I want to focus on one aspect of the process, the underlying logic of change.

It seems to me that at least one reason why Bill Gates is featured is that someone made the following deduction. Bill Gates is Microsoft. But Bill Gates is perceived to be a hard-nosed business nerd. If we soften the perception of Bill, we'll soften the perception of Microsoft.

At first, that might seem easier than trying to change the perception of Microsoft directly. The trouble is that even if they succeeded in changing the current perception of Bill Gates, Microsoft would still be associated with the old and long-standing perception of Bill Gates. If you want to move both ends of an equation, you have to do just that, move both of them.

There isn't any real need to try to move both ends anyway. Why not just create a new equation. What they want to do is change the perception of Microsoft, so that's what they should focus on doing. The way to do that is not through advertising, but through actions and products that inevitably make customers feel that something has changed.

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A Closed Shave.

You assumed I couldn't write another post about assumptions? This is the beautiful new hybrid razor or azor from King of Shaves that I recently picked up from their promotional bus. It's a company seeking to shake up a category and, as I am already a great fan of their shaving oil, I was intrigued to see if their promise that one could Shave Close, Longer, For Less would stand up.

It did, but sadly it would force me to have a goatee, because I found all those areas that a goatee and moustache cover quite impossible to shave. However, they're definitely onto something because shaving the rest of my face with long smooth strokes was a revelation. Fast, soft and incredibly close. I'm not sure if my experience is typical, but if I shaved my legs I know what razor I'd use.

If I'm right, I wonder if they'll start to think beyond their original assumptions and exploit another market in line with what the product does, rather than what they intended it to do. Many companies have done that in the past, but many more have floundered because they were too invested in their original plan.

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Never Assume.

As I wrote in my post about magic, assumptions can easily lead you astray. Take restaurants. It's pretty easy to guess one of the most important aspects of a restaurant as far as customers are concerned and according to this article, you'd be right.

Cleanliness was rated as the most highly valued aspect of restaurant selection among almost all respondents.

But what is cleanliness? In Barcelona you might be surprised to see the floor of a tapas bar strewn with discarded paper napkins and assume that it was a sloppy institution. You'd be completly wrong. The discarded napkins are, in fact, a traditional vote of customer approval. The messier the floor, the better the food.

Never assume that your prospective customers think the same way that you do or indeed the same way as the majority does. Just find out.

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