Don't Undermine Your Own Brand

Customers value authenticity. Your marketing should reflect what your company can deliver today, not what you aspire to do in the future

By Steve McKee

As the recession deepened last spring, a full-page newspaper ad from Citi (C) caught my eye. Considering the mess-of-its-own-making from which the bank was suffering, the ad featured an unusual headline: "Providing Stability. Securing the Future."

Clearly, I thought at the time, someone in the marketing department is not paying attention. Citi was not only being buffeted by the storm, it was the cause of it—at least in part. A company whose actions had led to so much financial instability laying claim to the opposite seemed detached at best, disingenuous at worst. (Ironically, the ad also featured the bank's longstanding slogan—"Citi never sleeps," which, I surmised, was truer than ever.)

Citi seems to have recognized the error of its ways. Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit recently admitted in a video on the company's blog: "It's clear that we made some mistakes." He says Citi has installed a new management team and new governance structure and that the bank is "working hard toward creating a culture of responsible finance." That, however, only reinforces the belief that the previous culture was committed to something less than being responsible.

After years of telling us to "Live Richly," Citi now professes "responsible finance" as the cornerstone that will drive everything it does. Perhaps so. Or perhaps not. As one visitor commented on Pandit's video blog, "I hope all of this is real."

Me too. Real or not, one thing is certain. Citi's issues get to the heart of the new watchword in marketing—authenticity.

today's false claims are soon exposed

With the headline-making mischief of companies such as Enron, Madoff Investments, BP (BP), and the like, consumers won't tolerate disingenuousness. And the advent of social media has given them more power than ever to expose pretenders.

Celebrities may appear beautiful on Entertainment Tonight, but when they say ugly things on answering machines, the world soon finds out. Athletes who are heroes on the field but scoundrels in real life can get away with living double lives for only so long. Companies that lay claim to something they're not can be called on it with increasing speed and fervor.

In such an environment, it behooves everyone in business to consider the extent of their brand's authenticity. Nobody wants to be exposed as a fraud.

First, authenticity requires honesty. As in human relationships, if you try to be something you're not, it won't ring true—and it won't be long until you get called on it. In modern marketing it's not so much lying that's the problem (with a few notable exceptions), it's embellishing the truth—usually in the form of braggadocio. Claiming to have "the best service," "the best prices," or some other cliché won't fly unless it's truly, demonstrably, and consistently true. Every brand wants to be well-regarded, but overpromising is a temptation to which too many marketers surrender.

Sometimes it pays to take the opposite tack by admitting a negative about your brand or category. Since a company is unlikely to confess to something that isn't true, doing so is an honest way to begin to build trust. Remember Joe Isuzu, the smile-while-you-lie car salesman? He became a pop culture icon based on the principle that if there's an element of truth to something, you might as well come clean about it. (On that point I give Citi's Pandit credit.)

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