The Importance of Authenticity

Jack Neff posted this article
in Advertising Age in which he writes about Unilever’s use of social media to communicate their brand message. Some of you may remember reading about Unilever’s video campaign for Dove entitled, “Onslaught” that I wrote about a few posts back.

Unilever got the attention they were looking for - and more than they bargained for in the process.

Among the viewers of the Onslaught campaign were certain members of Greenpeace who produced a parody of the “Onslaught” video entitled Onslaughter
that criticized Dove and Unilever for their purported involvement in razing Indonesian rainforests through their purchases of palm oil.

Their complaint, according to the Greenpeace website states, “Unilever pretends to be an environmentally responsible company, but what it is actually responsible for is destroying areas of rainforest, driving species extinction and speeding up global warming. Being one of the biggest users of palm oil on the planet, Unilever must stop buying palm oil from these companies and call for a halt on the destruction of Indonesian forests to grow palm oil.

This is not the first time Unilever has been the focus of controversy. At approximately the same time the “Onslaught” campaign was launched, a campaign for another of Unilever’s brands, “Axe” was also released. Remember the scantily clad women that Unilever warned us about in the Onslaught video? They were all over the Axe campaign.

A mashup video of the two ads mockingly advised viewers to “Talk to your daughters before Unilever does.”

For years, manufacturers made false promises and invented fake identities and got away with it.

But no more.

Too many eyes are upon you. Too many ears are listening. Web 2.0 has made it so that all of us live in the proverbial fish bowl.

Try to be something you’re not in today’s Internet age and you WILL be exposed!

Authenticity is your only hope.

1) Don’t tell your customers that you care about things you don’t really care about. (Or that you care about them a lot when you only care about them a little bit.)

2) Don’t make promises you can’t deliver.

3) Once you've made promises on which you CAN deliver, don’t go back on them.

4) Don’t pretend to be something that you’re not.

To their credit, Unilever has entered into talks with Greenpeace and is now planning to adopt new targets for sustainable palm-oil sourcing.

They've learned the hard way the value of authenticity.

What about you?