I recently wrote an opinion piece published in The Drum Marketing Magazine on the importance of authenticity in videos used for brand advertising. I highlighted a few candid videos from brands capturing consumers’ emotions during their brand stunts and events. In some cases, you see engaging emotion unfolding before your eyes while in others, you can’t help but feel like you’re watching actors hired to act out the emotions. Yes, we’re all fairly good at sniffing out fake emotion. We can tell when people are putting on a show, not truly experiencing emotion.
Brands should insist on capturing real emotion, real experiences, and real people reacting with authentic moments of surprise, delight, and happiness if they want to breakthrough.
It reminds me of the importance of being true to yourself in your career and life. As humans, all of us are quite adept at sensing when someone’s not being true to themselves, inauthentic, or fake. And we’ve all probably experienced that uncomfortable feeling when we’re not being true to ourselves. In this article, my challenge to brands is to aspire for honesty and authenticity, even if it doesn’t look perfect on paper. I’ll take authentic imperfection any day over disingenuous, scripted “perfection” any day.
The same holds true in my career & life. Sometimes those careers that look great on paper are in direct conflict with our true passions. Conversely, when you spend your time exercising your strengths, leveraging your passions, and being true to yourself, everything just looks and feels better in a way that simply can’t be scripted out.
