Funworld September 2008
 The Real WorldSatisfy consumers’ demands for authenticity and you’ll capture their hearts, minds, and dollars by Juliana Gilling HERE’S A LITTLE GAME: The next time you’re shopping at the supermarket flipping through a magazine or treating yourself to the latest restaurant in town, start playing “I Spy” for the words “real” and “authentic.” Pretty soon you’ll start asking yourself, “When did we need to be convinced?” Marketers have caught on to people’s growing desire for the “real thing.” How many times have you heard somebody say, “I got through to a real person!” or “I saw the real (insert country here).” Once upon a time, we didn’t need to use the word “real”; now we feel the need to emphasize it. “Real” has value and, increasingly, people are making personal and purchasing decisions based on what they perceive as “real” connections to themselves. So what’s prompting this way of thinking and what will it mean for the businesses of tomorrow? Bestselling authors Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore are starting the debate with their latest book, “Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want,” which was featured in TIME magazine’s recent “10 Ideas That Are Changing the World” cover story. It builds on the ideas raised in their influential 1999 book, “The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage.” As co-founders of Strategic Horizons LLP, Pine and Gilmore run a “thinking studio” that helps businesses conceive and design new ways of adding value to their economic offerings. When they’re not writing books, they’re sharpening their ideas through speaking and consultancy work fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurial startups, professional associations, and educational programs alike. This fall (Sept 24-25) they’ll be taking their 11th annual ThinkAbout gathering to Las Vegas for two days of creative learning centered on “The Experience Economy” and “Authenticity.” In “The Experience Economy,” Pine and Gilmore predicted that as goods and services became more commoditized, the companies that focused on staging experiences to engage customers would be best placed to achieve future business success. Fast-forward to the present day and we’re faced with a plethora of experiential offerings. In a world chock-full of contrived and staged experiences, people are now opting for what they perceive as the “real thing,” according to Pine and Gilmore, and savvy attractions companies must appeal to this “new consumer sensibility.” “The number-one business imperative today is to render authenticity—to manage the consumer perception of authenticity—so that your customers perceive your offering as real,” says Pine. “Consumers want the authentic, and it’s not something you can ignore any more than you can ignore quality, or costs, or availability.” The Authenticity Test “
This above all—to thine own self be true. In other words, says Pine, be true to your own self and be who you say you are to others. “Will your company’s past offerings and heritage limit what you can do in the future and still be perceived as true to self?” he asks. “Look to your employees because they’re often the people who will know first that, ‘Hey, this isn’t right; this isn’t a behavior, an action, or a decision that fits in with who we are.’ It can have a corrosive effect on an organization when people are asked to do things that pull them away from who they are.” On the second point, he adds: “Examine everything
you say about yourself and check that
it matches what you’re
offering. As one of our friends likes to say, if you could
check into the
ads for any airline, hotel, or hospital,
you’d have a good experience. Check into the actual
place and the disconnect between their advertising and what you encounter means that
you’ll perceive “Don’t fall prey to the very human desire to want to stretch the truth,” he says. “You want to under-promise and over-deliver.” One of the biggest challenges for parks and attractions, when it comes to rendering authenticity, is that it’s such a slippery concept. “Authenticity is, basically, conformance to self-image,” says Pine. “It’s when you, as a company or a brand, reach inside a person and strike a chord that creates a sympathetic vibration. So that person thinks, ‘Ah, that’s me, that’s like me, that’s what I want to be.’ But because we often have different self-images and different histories of interactions with companies, two people can view the same experience very differently.” For businesses grappling with authenticity, Gilmore reckons a good place to start is by asking: “Where are you most fake?” and “What can you do with that element of your offering to gain a greater sense of authenticity?” Companies shouldn’t fall into the trap of simply slapping on words such as “genuine” and “real” and expecting the public to buy into it, according to Pine and Gilmore. Instead, parks and attractions should focus on providing places that allow their customers to identify with, enjoy, and experience offerings that truly reflect who the companies say they are. “Don’t just say you’re authentic: be authentic,” says Pine. If you should happen to be fake through and through, then acknowledge it to your guests and have fun with it—your customers might even see you as all the more real for it. “If we’re totally honest about how fake we are, we’re being truer to what we say we are to others,” says Pine. Where entertainment companies really have the upper hand, though, is through their potential to change their customers’ lives for the better. “What would you do differently if you knew that parents were bringing their children to your attraction to enhance their relationships, as opposed to just giving them a good time?” asks Pine. Gilmore adds: “If I go to your venue with my kids, how is my relationship better because of that time versus if I go to your competitor’s?”
Juliana Gilling is a specialist attractions journalist. E-mail: julianagilling@gmail.com.
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