Authenticity is NOT a personal brand strategy
By: Anne Miltenburg
Tags: Brand Strategy, Authenticity, Personal Branding

Over the weekend, I mulled over the conversation with the Happy Startup School community and my Wim Hoff encounter.

I work with many talented professionals who already find it hard enough to sell themselves well, and I don’t like to see more anxiety piling on for all the wrong reasons.

Before you put all of your eggs in the authenticity basket, it’s worth clearing up some of the misunderstandings around the concept.

Being authentic doesn’t work for everyone at every stage

If you pursue authenticity as a means to get customers, you should consider more than anecdotal evidence of its success.

Does authenticity really help you to get customers?

Hiring practices at big firms in the US give us some interesting clues. Though it’s not a 1:1 fit, the psychology of hiring employees is very similar to the psychology involved in hiring an independent consultant or contractor.

Research* has shown that during job interviews, only the top 10% of job applicants benefit from the display of authenticity and vulnerability.

Or to put it plainly,

being authentic and vulnerable gives you an extra edge once your expertise is established.

If you were part of the other 90%, your authenticity might make you more memorable, but it won’t get you hired.

This might be helpful to keep in mind when you are at the start of your career, you’ve just started your business, or if you are making the switch into a new professional field.

Authenticity can muddle your profile

The point of building a personal brand is to establish yourself in the minds of your audience as THE professional to help them solve a particular problem in their life or work.

But while all of us are so busy trying to show our full selves, we can forget about the perception that we are actually building in the minds of our audience.

A case in point from my own experience: I regularly need great brand copywriters. I follow a number of potential collaborators on Linkedin. Some are great in helping me understand what type of work they would be the perfect fit for through thoughtful posts that reflect on their work, philosophy and lessons learned.

Then there is one person who clearly follows the authenticity playbook, and is constantly busy being her full ‘authentic’ self, with posts stretching way into the personal sphere. I actually had forgotten she was a copywriter, to begin with.

Authenticity might help people build a fuller picture of you as a person (which can help build trust and preference), but it’s worth checking if that fuller picture isn’t obscuring what people might hire you for.

At the end of the day, having fans is nice, but having customers is crucial.

If authenticity equals ‘me, me, me’, it can turn people off

While the pressure is constantly on us to be our authentic selves, it’s easy to lose sight of the other.

No one likes a narcissist.

I have actually grown some resentment towards the above-mentioned copywriter: although her resume suggests that she is open to my business, she clearly has no space for me in her work-life.

She gives me no clues that she understands nor cares for the copywriting challenges that I face. As a matter of fact, I get the impression that she’d rather be something else than a copywriter. I certainly don’t get the impression that she would give her full self to my projects.

And maybe that makes me old-fashioned, but I still like to hire people who I think will do a great job for me.

Your authenticity only works for your business if it works for your customers.

Authenticity isn’t an escape hatch from the discomfort of selling yourself

We all find it humiliating to have to ask for business. We hope our product is so great, it will sell itself (fingers crossed it goes viral). We pray others will do the selling for us (hurrah for brand ambassadors!).

The authenticity trend seemingly offers us a way around the icky side of promoting our work: wrap the sales pitch in a personal story and it won’t feel like we’re selling ourselves.

It’s a little mind trick that allows us to fool ourselves into thinking we’re not really being icky.

But…

what originated as the simple notion that marketing is more effective and enjoyable when it is less manipulative and more human, is starting to feel very manipulative indeed.

Getting up in the morning and planning how we can come across as authentic as possible that day is pretty much the antithesis of authenticity.

When we reluctantly trade in our privacy and show off our full selves, our families, our love lives, our failures, our successes and our mental and physical health for marketing success, that’s next level icky.

Authenticity is NOT actually a brand strategy

When so much of our focus is on authenticity, we almost forget that it is not a strategy on its own.

Authenticity is merely a quality, or condition, of your expression.

A good brand strategy outlines what you will do and say to get your ideal clients or customers on board.

Being original and personable in how you execute that strategy can certainly help, but don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that being your authentic self is a solid plan to grow your business.