Launched in 2020 and topped the app store charts, BeReal, a French photo-sharing app, is being hailed as an antidote to fake photos on existing social media platforms. Users provide dual images through front and rear cameras, sharing images that capture a specific moment and reaction without using filters. Their promotional slogan, “If you want to be an influencer, you can stay on TikTok and Instagram,” suggests a voluntary and informal “authenticity,” but there is a question of whether this strategy can sustain its performance in the long run.

Whenever new products and services are launched, companies try to seduce us with versions of authenticity.

Such attempts to build a uniform concept of credibility from the product and service planning stage can be effective in the early stages of expansion, contrasting with existing big players in the market, but ultimately the commercial purpose will prevail. Of course, people want authenticity. They want to eat real food, visit good places, be their true selves and expect authentic interactions. But authenticity is a vague concept. What one person thinks is authentic may seem false to another, and it tends to change with societal tastes.

Therefore, the question for companies in the future is not so much how to use their own vague definition of authenticity as a selling point, but rather how to build sustainable authenticity.

Coloplast, a Danish medical technology company, was founded in 1954 by a nurse named Elis Sørensen who watched her sister recover from colostomy surgery, which is primarily performed on patients with stomach or colon cancer. The surgery saved her sister's life, but she was too afraid to leave the house because of the fear of her colostomy bag leaking. To help her sister, Sørensen devised a colostomy bag with an adhesive ring that could be secured, and thus was born what is today the most patient-centric healthcare company in the world.

However, in 2008, the company's core colostomy business was stagnant, and the cause was found in the fundamental assumptions about the market that had guided the company's success for decades. It was the assumption that the focus should be on improving each of the various functions of the colostomy bag, in other words, the assumption that creating one perfect product was the authentic approach to meeting the needs of the market and customers.However, in reality, patients had different body shapes, and after recognizing and acknowledging this, Coloplast launched the Bodyfit product line, which was divided into three major body types based on the criterion of “fit to the real body”, achieving both a revolutionary change in product portfolio restructuring and commercial success.

Authenticity can be a compelling criterion in product and service planning. But it involves acknowledging and accepting that both corporate executives and consumers have private domains. Products are a means for entrepreneurs to achieve their personal goals. And for consumers, products have great significance as tools for maintaining and strengthening their relationships with others in society, including themselves. Both sides are invited into each other's homes and can walk around the house, but they realize that there are rooms they should not open. In many cases, companies spend billions of dollars in R&D investment to confirm this highly private consumer space, while corporate executives rarely check their own private rooms. This ultimately creates the irony that the goal of authenticity towards consumers remains at the product level.

An entrepreneur preparing for a new approach to sports agencies was about to get married. With experience playing as a player in overseas leagues, he was confident about the limitations of domestic agencies and his own potential. My opinion to his question was “designing the life of the players after retirement.” The industry approaches players from the age of 17 to their late 30s as their prime as players. However, players fear life after retirement, which is much faster than other professions. This is a phenomenon that is commonly confirmed in research papers on domestic and European league players. Reflecting this, European banks limit mortgage loans for professional soccer players to the age of 35. Retirement is a reality that players experience suddenly, but the industry ignores it. And the government and public institutions take care of it later. If you choose to view professional players as products, the planning stage becomes simple, but competition becomes fierce. On the other hand, if you view players as adults in society who worry about their future after retirement, you will have to face an unfamiliar planning stage, but you will have the opportunity to build a more competitive value system.

What choices could you make if you were that entrepreneur? Incorporating integrated authenticity into product or service planning can be a more complex and challenging goal than you might think. However, if you can create a starting point based on the reality of the consumers you are trying to persuade, and take an honest look at the intentions within your company, you can see the opportunity to achieve sustained authenticity. At the very least, you can see the option of not being deceived by your own claims of authenticity.

*This article is the original content published in the Electronic Newspaper named columnon June 27, 2023.

References

BeReal and the Doomed Quest for Online Authenticity

Coloplast brand story

An Anthropologist Walks into a Bar

Retirement planning among South African professional soccer players

A Study on Retirement Anxiety and Expectations for Life After Retirement Among Professional Soccer Players

Sad Retired Players, Nowhere to Go