
One major spin-off of my very minor involvement in the Rag Trade was combining Sunday morning buying trips to Brick Lane wholesalers with visits to The Lahore Kebab House in Commercial Street. This world famous eatery sold a choice of two curries, one meat and one veg, and you either brought your own drinks or poured tap-water from an ancient stone sink. No frills, no distracting finery, just a scratched Formica table top and a world of unforgettably flavours…
The eighty-year-old twin brothers lived in a farmhouse ‘built like broken box-crates’ between monastery-capped mountains and the impossibly blue Aegean. They marched their goats across the beach every morning to reach the best pasture, and produced cream cheese fit for the Gods. Best served at night, with plump Kalamata olives, home-made retsina and a hundred million stars…
Youngs Brewery used magnificent 'Dray' Horses and carts to deliver beer to their pubs right up until 2006. And for years one of the Draymen, the liveried charioteers who drove the carts, had a seat on the Board of Directors ...not just the running-board.
The recipe for authenticity was probably first formulated by the ancestors of the Taverna Twins mentioned above, those infinitely curious (and querulous!) people who scratched their laurel-wreathed heads in the classical equivalent of Silicon Valley, Ancient Greece. But as usual it fell to the West Midlands Chapter of The Business of Pleasure to express it best: "This, above all: to thine own self be true" (Hamlet, Act1 Scene III)
More recently, ideas on authenticity were given a little Gallic ‘je ne sais quoi’ by the Existentialists. According to Sartre: ‘existence predates essence’ and we continually redefine ourselves (i.e. become more authentic) through our lifetimes.
Here are some thoughts of Jean Paul’s compatriots:
Coco Chanel (one-time warm-up cabaret singer): “Hard times arouse an instinctive desire for authenticity.”
Eric Cantona (one-time football icon): “Children go where they find sincerity and authenticity.”
Albert Camus (one-time Algerian Universities goal-keeper): “Any authentic creation is a gift to the future.”
Authenticity occupies a special place in The Business of Pleasure on both sides of the Channel. It both elevates and somehow ennobles both the experiences it contributes to and the organisations that produce and promote them. It’s almost as if by maintaining their authenticity (i.e. their integrity) and staying ‘real,’ they have heroically fought off the forces of compromise, dilution and adulteration. We instinctively want to pin a bravery medal on them. Or at least pat them on the back.
What’s more, by some mystical (and somewhat cannibalistic) process, authenticity also makes our audiences actually feel more authentic for consuming it.
It takes them a little bit closer to their ‘real’ inner selves that Sartre was referring to above.
A bit further along the spectrum to that special place that: ‘contains the constellation of feelings, needs, desires, capacities, aptitudes, disposition and creative abilities that make them a unique individual.’
Perhaps our authentic curry houses, goatherds and breweries should include a charge in the ticket-price for re-setting their patrons’ authenticity in this way? Maybe call it a Restoration Levy..?
But seriously…
A recent study of the literature of authenticity (Lehman, 2019) identified three types of authenticity, ‘The Three Cs’
CONSISTENCY: ‘the relationship between something (or someone’s) external characteristics and their internal values …‘it does what it says on the tin’
CONFORMITY: e.g. something (or someone) conforms with our general idea of how this type of thing (or person) typically behaves
CONNECTION: ‘…with a person, place or time, etc., as claimed’ e.g. the actual jacket Jimi Hendrix wore at Woodstock, a genuine Picasso rather than a print-shop knock-off, Polish Vodka distilled in Krakow not Cobham
And, more recently, a fourth ‘C’ has been suggested…
CONTINUITY: ‘which allows for changes in authenticity over time, and places greater emphasis on becoming authentic rather than being authentic
Whilst authenticity is a highly desirable quality, it is also notoriously difficult to create for practitioners of The Business of Pleasure. From banks ‘repurposed’ as pubs by the insertion of old prints and horse-brasses, to camera-friendly prefabricated pop groups miming (badly) to pre-recorded backing tracks.
Indeed, the very act of marketing something to a broader spectrum of segments may inevitably mean ‘watering down’ the very characteristics that made it special in the first place.
There is also the problem of subjectivity. My perception of authentic meat pie and chips (as a Londoner) might be very different from those of Mancunians, Dubliners and Glaswegians.
And what if the fare on offer is more complex than offal, pastry and potatoes? Take a Play or a Musical. How do we discriminate between an actor’s ‘authentic’ performance, drawn from his personal experiences and response to the material, with the writer of that material’s own authentic story-telling (perhaps written 2,500 years previous) and the director who’s trying to realize his own ‘authentic’ vision of the piece?
The short answer …we just sense it, feel it instinctively (that word again) as a kind of ‘truth’ that seems to be present in every second of the production. As evidenced (in spades!) in Robert Icke’s take on Aeschylus’ ‘Oresteia’, for example, or Stephen Daldry’s ‘Billy Elliot, The Musical.’
But there is one area of The Business of Pleasure where authenticity is more easily definable, if not quite so easily deliverable…
Brand Authenticity...
For most organisations living (or dying) under the white-hot glare of 24/7 global social media, there has never been a worse time to try and straddle the chasm between the stated aims of an organisation and how that brand is experienced by patrons and partners. Just imagine these firms as surfers trying desperately to maintain their footing above the swell of changing audience priorities and perceptions …and who also have to adjust the board (and Board) to contend with successive waves of innovation and competitor predation.
Those seas never stop moving. Staying on top, and keeping the organisation authentic, requires continuous adjustment and eternal vigilance. Including actively seeking out feedback from social listening, online-testing, search-research and user-generated content, etc., and using the data these listening-posts surface like a ship’s radar; identifying (or inferring) any rocks and reefs up ahead to help navigate safely and steer improvements, upgrades and innovations. Most importantly, it means continuously eliciting honest feedback from customer-facing personnel who actually deliver the brand, and ensure its authenticity, day-in, day-out.
Of course, so many organisations within The Business of Pleasure are blessed with teams who are ‘living the dream,’ and who therefore need little or no or encouragement to maintain engagement and embody brand values. But for everyone else, it will probably be the eternal (and existential) challenge of regularly reinforcing the organisation’s priorities and objectives (and successes and failures) with their teams. And, most importantly, agreeing with those teams the yardsticks (both realistic and stretching) by which progress will be made (and maintained).
For most of us, most of the time, maintaining authenticity is never easy, be it in a pasanda, a pint, or a publicly listed company. Especially in the heat of battle, or when faced with pressures from punters, partners or the P & L. And if at any time it seems like I’m being anything less than authentic in these posts and podcasts, please, please drop me a line and say:
“Hey DT, keep it real!”
David Thomas Revised 30 Jan 2025
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