Best of the Week: Authenticity is dead

[View web version]( BEST OF THE WEEK And another thing... September 14, 2019 Welcome to Best of the Week, mainly written yesterday afternoon at home in Sydney. And what better way to spend Friday the 13th than making a series of trips next door trying to persuade Loki the cat that’s he’s outstayed his welcome in the neighbour’s attic? It turns out Loki has been leading a double life, eating breakfast at our place before hopping over the fence and stealing the food of the cat next door too. Loki is now grounded for the weekend, while I have no intention of being stoic about the giant scratch he put down my arm during his eventual rescue. The age of inauthenticity There was a time when I used to be invited onto the telly and radio quite regularly to explain adland to the public. And I began to realise that I was using the same few phrases over-and-over again. For instance, I used to breezily argue that digital advertising was an overall benefit for consumers and the industry. “I’d rather be targeted with an ad that’s relevant to my interests than one that I’m not interested in,” I’ve chirped dozens of times. That was until I began to realise that the way it really works is either credit card ads outbidding everyone else or months of stalky retargeting because you made the mistake of researching a brand without first engaging incognito mode. And I had another go-to line that always seemed to land well when I was asked to defend advertising. Then Mark bloody Ritson ruined that one for me by writing about conference cliches. “And among all the identikit conference planning there is one particular old advertising chestnut that always comes up. Always. As sure as the fact that the most interesting conference debate is outside by the bins among the smokers, or that the one marketer you really wanted to meet is a last minute no-show. At some point at every marketing conference you’ve ever been to someone gets up on stage and declares (drum roll, please): “‘People don’t hate advertising. They hate bad advertising.’” I’ve trotted that one out on telly plenty of times too. Which left me with just one more reliable observation that presenters always seem to like. “Thanks to social media we’re now living in an age of authenticity”. Social media, goes the theory, means that brands no longer have anywhere to hide. They’ve gotta be honest. Influencers, even more so. But actually, that’s wrong, and has been for some time. Maybe it was never even right. For all the age of authenticity hype, there’s actually never been a time when brands and individuals have been able to get away with more inauthentic behaviour. She Is Roxy But before we get to that, let’s start with the one surprisingly authentic moment of the week. Our editor Viv was offered a relatively last minute opportunity to interview controversial publicist, turned Daily Mail magnet, Roxy Jacenko for the Mumbrellacast. But there was a catch. The deal was, the podcast would need to go up on Wednesday, ahead of the broadcast of the Ten pilot episode of I Am Roxy. Viv and I debated whether the conversation would give enough value - and be of sufficient interest to our audience - to do an extra, bonus episode for the week. Viv was keener than me, and we decided to go for it. I recounted to Viv how [I recorded a video interview with Jacenko seven years ago](, when she had her first novel to promote. I actually read it. I forget the plot, but do remember it wasn’t that great. It seemed common knowledge at the time that the book had been ghost written by a journo from the Daily Telegraph’s Sydney Confidential showbiz team. I bottled out of going for the cheap laugh of asking her whether she’d read her book. Listening to Jacenko’s conversation with Viv this week, I wish she had. She was less guarded than she was back in 2012, volunteering that when that first book came out she hadn’t read any book. Since then of course, her profile has exploded. She seems to have made a lot of money by riding the influencer wave. The audience reaction to the Mumbrellcast was about what I’d been expecting. Commenter “Robbo” was first to get in there on the comment thread.: “Why, why why give her any airtime at all? She’s EVERYTHING that is wrong with media, PR and marketing, tied up in a neat little bow of pure, white-hot self-indulgence and a stunning lack of self-awareness and humility. Sure, I’m falling for your schtick by engaging, but seriously, I thought you lot were above this.” But the thing is, it was a really good interview. She was a lot more self aware, and self deprecating than I’d anticipated. Honest and intense was how Viv summed up the conversation in her intro, and I’d agree with that. From somebody who epitomises the worst of the self-indulgent, shallow end of the publicity world came something remarkably authentic. I wonder whether the [overnight metro ratings of 399,000]( will be sufficient to take the show from pilot to series. I’ve a hunch that the show is going to do quite well on catchup viewing. The 28-day numbers will be worth looking out for. Status angst Digital life is full of inauthentic moments. On Tuesday, I snapped momentarily. My contact details have been on the web long enough that I’m on every conceivable mailing list, from agencies trying to inveigle us into adding links in articles that mention their clients, to companies offering web development, to dodgy SEO link builders offering up low quality articles on “Ten Businesses You Can Run From Your Smartphone” and so on. I currently have 297,781 unopened emails. (Apologies if I haven’t got back to you yet.) The useless emails are normally easy to spot without opening. The time difference actually helps. If it came in overnight, the chances are far higher that it’s going to be a waste of time opening. On Tuesday though, one actually got through, thanks to a misleading subject line. Headed with the official sounding “Email Delivery Status” I actually opened it. And of course it was another tiny moment of inauthenticity, yet another email trying to sell me WordPress. A few seconds of my time stolen by deception, and another microblow to the credibility of email marketing. Rather than doing the usual deletion, I protested, pointlessly: “That's a really spammy, misleading subject line. Please unsubscribe me and do not contact me again.” It’s just as bad over on LinkedIn, or possibly worse as these are people who can get through. Even people I’ve had dealings with feel it’s okay to send cheery faux personal messages like “Hey Tim. I don't think I've shared this with you yet? Have I?” before attaching a marketing message. Just one more misleading moment of inauthenticity, but they do it because it works. As I look, the next one down in the LinkedIn box comes from a video training company attempting to piggyback on RUOK Day to flog a $500 management training video. Yuk. If you got angry at each one you’d go mad. And here we are, apparently in the age of authenticity. The big global influencer story of the week was that of Caroline Calloway. Or as Wikipedia sums her up her: “Known for posting photos with lengthy captions, she has been criticized for not delivering a book for which she received a $375,000 advance, for not completing a performance tour she had announced, and for allowing much of her prose to be ghost-written by a friend.” That ghost-writing friend has this week published [a lengthy behind-the-scenes essay which is both depressing and hilarious.]( Want to know how the influencer economy works? It’s somebody selling $165 tickets to lifestyle workshops when she’s not got round to booking a venue, while somebody else writes her Insta captions. A few years back, I saw the rise of an Instagram influencer from behind the scenes. My entrepreneurial personal trainer was pivoting (successfully as it happens) into the fashion business. Along the way, he started to make a buck out of social media. He’d tell me eyebrow-raising stories about meeting with the agency representing him, how they urged him to start a blog and to fake his Google Analytics traffic numbers. “It’s what Photoshop is for,” they told him. (Want to know why Mumbrella still has its numbers verified by the Audited Media Association of Australia? That anecdote is why.) And he’d talk about the shenanigans involved in borrowing a Rolls Royce for a shoot, or getting access to the steps of a private jet for a picture. He hadn’t come up through the journalistic world. As he saw it, he was creating fun, aspirational images, not faking a lifestyle. Yet I’d see the comments from followers when he posted the images to social media, from people impressed at the life they thought he was living. And as the rise of social media influencers has continued, I’ve found myself wondering whether my own instinctive scepticism towards them is out of date. Maybe the journalistic attitude of telling awkward truths, even if it means dumping on your own doorstep, is a relic of another time. When I lived in the UK, the BBC had a huge scandal. It emerged that on a small number of TV and radio shows, callers for competitions hadn’t been real because the shows were pre-recorded. There were resignations and recriminations that rocked the entire organisation. Truth and trust mattered. But mainstream media attitudes to truth have changed. If those sort of incidents happened in Australia today, I suspect the scandal would go no further than a segment on the ABC’s Media Watch. I bet you don’t even remember when [Media Watch busted Nova faking local winners]( back in 2017. Perhaps the audience simply doesn’t care about authenticity, and just wants to be entertained. Do viewers really care that things like The Bachelor are confected? Maybe they’re not dumb, but are simply suspending disbelief. Look at how the comedic alternative persona of former SBS newsreader Lee Lin Chin emerged. Her tweets were written by comedian Chris Leben. The duo even gave [a TEDx talk about the process](. The audience was in on that joke. Weren’t they? In 2017 Chin got into a Twitter spat with politician Pauline Hanson. Only it was really a case of Leben writing Chin’s tweets and Hanson’s political advisor James Ashby doing the same for her. It’s a debate we’ve been having for more than a decade now. Remember Australia’s first great social media hoax - [Witchery’s man in the jacket](? That was the fake YouTube video of the actress pretending to hunt for the man who left his jacket in a cafe. Adam Ferrier, at the time still one of the bosses of Naked Communications, defended it to me back in 2009, with a quote that could just as easily have been given in 2019: “I totally agree with the social media commentators that brands need to be authentic these days, but that does not mean they cannot be playful. If it gets to the point where you have to be 100% truthful the whole time, it becomes a very sterile outcome. People will be afraid to try different things.” That still frames the debate today. However, I suspect there are many practitioners in social media who no longer even believe that authenticity is necessary. It’s optional. Seeming to be authentic is good though. Instead, social media is a tool, and one often used clumsily by people to build their persona. This week, an agency boss shared to her own Instagram account an inspirational quote from herself. It was - and I promise I’m not making this up - the somewhat passive aggressive “SORRY IF MY PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS ARE SO HIGH, IT’S JUST THE WAY IT IS”. The caption was then appended with her own name, presumably so she would get due recognition in the unlikely event this wisdom is reshared. The same person has also previously shared dozens of inspirational quotes - all from herself - including “HMM, I DO IT MY WAY BECAUSE IT’S PROVEN TO WORK”, “I CAN’T STAND EXCUSES, NOT MY STYLE” and “DON’T TELL ME YOU CAN’T DO IT, FIND A WAY”. Steve Jobs she’s not. And although I don’t know her, I bet she’s not as awful in real life as the Alan Partridge style quotes suggest. But there’s nothing authentic about posting quotes from yourself. But again, perhaps authenticity isn’t the point. Disney was much praised for its use of Twitter when it revealed the Disney Plus streaming service last month. Announcing “It’s moving day! Is everyone packed and ready to go to?”, it then triggered a string of canned responses from the company’s sub brands. “Almost! But in a shocking turn of events, we can't find Dory,” tweeted Pixar. “Maybe we can help! Have you tried looking in shallow, tropical reefs of the Indo-Pacific? That’s where you’ll find paracanthurus hepatus. Just don’t get confused with acanthurus leucosternon or acanthurus coeruleus – they all are known as blue tangs!” came the on-brand response from National Geographic. “Hang tight. We have quite a few suits here.” chimed in Marvel Entertainment with an Iron Man image. “And we’ve got Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, on your left!” tweeted The Avengers verified account. And so it went on with Star Wars, Guardians of The Galaxy, ESPN joining in too, with each individual tweet generating thousands of likes, and of course awareness of Disney Plus. Yet of course, the reality was a series of pre-written tweets that would have been through multiple layers of approvals and rewriting by paid copywriting professionals. I’m sure it will be an awards case study video soon enough. If followers thought too hard about it, the fun would soon drain right away. At least when brands do it, it’s fairly harmless. Much more dangerous is when democracy is at stake. Monday night’s episode of Four Corners, on The ABC - “[Fake News: The battle of the social networks](” sounds like it will be worth watching. But it’s worth acknowledging that while there seem to be no rewards for authenticity and little downside for fakes, there’s also not much point in complaining about it either. Social media is a wonderful means of sharing and discovering content, and talking to people. But let’s admit it’s also made the world a less authentic place. The Cat is back And on that cheery note, it’s time to get on with the weekend. Before I go, a final reminder that our [Publish conference]( is this Thursday. We’ve just announced Antony Catalano as a late - and exciting - addition. And speaking of cats, I’ve got a surprise for Loki tonight. Our dinner guest will be bringing her dog. Loki’s going to love that. Through what I assume must be some sort of rostering snafu, our editor Vivienne - vivienne@mumbrella.com.au is on the newsdesk again this weekend. Please do send her your news. And I welcome your emails to tim@mumbrella.com.au. I just know that together we can get up to that 300,000 unread emails mark. Have a great weekend. Toodlepip... Tim Burrowes Content Director - Mumbrella Mumbrella | 46-48 Balfour Street Chippendale NSW 2008 Australia This email was sent to {EMAIL}. If you would rather not receive Mumbrella's Best of the Week email you can [unsubscribe]( or [manage subscriptions](. [Facebook]( [LinkedIn]( [Twitter](