Brands are alienating customers by telling the wrong story and championing a false purpose. Your business can avoid the same fate, attract loyal customers, and out-narrate the competition by embracing authenticity. Equal parts provocation and exhortation, the insights of Authenticity apply to business, marketing, and life in general. Too many companies depend on marketing tactics that don't match the needs and concerns of their customers or embrace messaging and causes that don't connect. Authenticity is an anti-gimmick business book. It prescribes clear strategies that enable companies to communicate in a more genuine, emotional way. Authors Mark Toft, Jay Sunny, and Rich Taylor provide a series of approaches to help embrace and communicate the purpose of your brand with effectiveness. Whether you're a business executive who wants to be more persuasive or an advertising professional looking to grow your brand, this book combines the authors' successful experiences at top agencies into practical advice that can work for anyone in any business. Readers will learn the importance of purpose and conflict in marketing activities, how to approach advertising with clarity and passion, and how to plan content while avoiding the false allure of aspirational advertising and insincere corporate social responsibility. Inauthentic messaging can often spell failure for a business, but the company that tells a genuine, compelling story to its clients is the one that succeeds.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments This is not an introduction PART I: SETTING THE STAGE 1. The best definitions of branding and advertising you'll find 2. What we mean by authenticity PART II: WHY AUTHENTICITY 3. Because it's what we need and resist most 4. Because branding and advertising are ready for an authenticity revolution 5. Because the survival of your business depends on it PART III: WHAT AUTHENTICITY REQUIRES 6. Authenticity requires purpose 7. What your brand's purpose is not 8. Find your hill and defend it 9. What's your exploding scoreboard? 10. Understand your audience 11. Name the problem and how you solve it 12. Seek conflict 13. Creation over disruption 14. Put yourself in the shoes of your customer and ask, "So what?" 15. Use it or lose it 16. Remember, people would rather like than hate you 17. Know your role, and don't try to be the hero 18. You can't succeed without emotion 19. Being emotional doesn't mean being saccharine 20. Authenticity requires avoiding business jargon PART IV: FIXING AN INAUTHENTIC BRAND 21. Consider the new reality about how people make decisions 22. Cause with caution 23. Remember, a company without a story is a company without a strategy 24. Be honest about whether your current brand story is boring 25. Trim the fat 26. Kill your darlings 27. Don't try to be funny 28. Nobody ever played air guitar to a logo 29. This is not a generic brand video 30. There's beauty in simplicity 31. Speaking of beauty. . . 32. There is no such thing as speed farming or abracadabra marketing 33. What Frank Lloyd Wright can teach us about branding 34. Play to the audience, not the amps (or, what the Ramones can teach us about branding) PART V: BREAKING BAD HABITS, BUILDING BETTER ONES 35. Take a chance on your customers 36. Beware the fool's gold of easy brilliance 37. Create hot, edit cold 38. It's an act of daring to be sincere 39. Authenticity and memorability 40. Consider why your dog stares at you when he poops 41. Know the proper role of research 42. Know your "80 years young" boundaries 43. Avoid these words 44. Avoid inauthenticity in photos and imagery 45. Get your white tuxedo dirty 46. Don't fall in love with celebrities 47. Don't spill your candy in the lobby 48. A loud voice can make even the truth sound foolish 49. Don't get that person. Be that person. 50. Shut up, he explained 51. Maybe people don't want to join your conversation 52. Say yes to criticism, no to condemnation PART VI: SELECT PROFILES IN AUTHENTICITY 53. The customer experience paradox 54. The non-flashy warehouse club 55. HBO and authentic brand evolution 56. LEGO: Saved by loyal customers 57. The surprise and delight of Zappos 58. Airbnb and the importance of not giving up 59. CrossFit and the art of staying out of the way PART VII: PROFILES THAT SHOW THE PERILS OF INSINCERITY 60. Spotting an insincere brand 61. BOA, the bank opposed to authenticity 62. Segway, the overhyped machine 63. McDonald's, not exactly lovin' it 64. United Airlines and the abandonment of purpose 65. Sears and a brand magic that was lost in transition 66. Facebook fakery 67. Saturn, god of both wealth and dissolution 68. Monsanto, where lawyers control the message PART VIII: USING MEDIA AUTHENTICALLY 69. The medium is a message, not the message 70. Media 101 71. Media and authenticity 72. Media by the numbers 73. Media traps to avoid 74. Media and your message PART IX: ASSESSMENT TOOLS 75. A general guide for assessing marketing ideas 76. Grading the authenticity of your marketing 77. Your authenticity checklist/gut check 78. An abridged Story Workshop© 79. Watch out for tactical tricks PART X: CLOSING THOUGHTS 80. The moral of the story 81. Share your story with us Thank You Notes Index About the Authors