Authentic Marketing: How to Capture Hearts and Minds Through the Power of Purpose , reviewed

By review of Authentic Marketing: How to Capture Hearts and Minds Through the Power of Purpose

Engage on a deeper level by disrupting the typical business development script Authentic Marketing offers a forward-thinking approach to achieving an entirely new level of engagement with today’s purpose-driven and skeptical audiences. The heart of this process involves finding the soul of your organization. When moral purpose becomes central to your organization, it can deliver benefits to both the bottom line and mankind: a profit meets purpose proposition. This path requires a reinvention of today’s dated business model, abolishing the inefficient, siloed approach of developing a business strategy first and then later creating separate strategies for marketing, HR, manufacturing, R&D, etc. The new integrated model fuses a tight integration of business, technology innovation and engagement strategies, all of which are bound together by a company’s moral purpose. When moral purpose is central to an organization’s core, everything branches out from a place of authenticity.

This is an interesting idea and has a lot to support the thinking behind it. If your story is more sincere, genuine and believable then there is greater potential for your audience to connect and engage with it. The devils advocate would wonder, what happens if evil people, IS for example, also use these strategies to engage more effectively too. Disturbed elements like IS have already been proven to be adept users of social media too. I guess like everything, the technology is neutral, it is up to the users how it is used, and whether it is used for good or evil.

With this caveat considered the book is insightful, interesting and thought provoking. Weber also demonstrates that, after several decades in the business, he is aware of the importance of assessing how your campaign is going and adapting on the fly when necessary. It has enabled his company, Weber Shandwick to remain relevant with a changing demographic audience that they need to reach to be successful. We can think of many marketing agencies that would do well to read this book and take on board the insights and messages that Weber is sharing. It may feel more time consuming, but in a busy market out there, it is the most genuine and honest story ‘doers’ that will be most effective and achieve the best results.

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