Insight
Court
Every brand wants to be seen as authentic right now. It’s become one of those default values being dropped into pitch decks like it means something.
Once upon a time, 'authentic' meant raw edges. Club stamps. Organic textures. A bit of scrappy photography. A visual code that said, look, we’re real. It worked back when trust was easier to earn and much harder to fake. But we’ve moved on. Authenticity doesn’t live in how you look anymore.
In 2025, it’s about whether people believe you. And increasingly? They don’t.
The internet made it possible for anyone to say anything and look the part. A brand can invent a backstory, AI-generate empathy, spin up a founder narrative out of thin air and still manage to rack up followers.
But attention doesn’t equal belief. People are now much sharper and way more suspicious. They’re not just listening to what you say but watching for proof.
And if what you say doesn’t line up with how you behave? You’re done.
For years, brands used design to signal authenticity and for a while, that was enough. But when everyone’s using the same cues, they stop meaning anything. Cries in Helvetica Neue. So no, you can’t fake your way to trust anymore. You actually have to be it.
This is where strategy should come in. And not the kind of 'strategy', where someone sends you a questionnaire to get to the heart of what you do (red flag). Answering 'what’s your mission?' by throwing some random values into ChatGPT, to come out with something that sounds vaguely impressive… but says absolutely nothing about who they really are.
It's not strategy. It's not brand clarity. You're playing dress up with words.
You simply can't get to the truth of a brand with a checklist. You get there through conversation. One thats messy and expressive.
Especially if you’re working with founders. That’s where the gold is. You ask them what frustrates them about their industry. What they’re trying to fix. What they can’t stop talking about. You watch when they light up. When they shift in their seat. If you know how to read people, you can feel when the story’s real and when it’s been focus-grouped to death. And honestly? If I can't have that kind of conversation with a client, I already know we’re probably not the right fit.
Because so many brands think they know the vibe they give off. They’ll send over a moodboard that says 'make it look like this,' without realising that what they’re actually saying is: help me fit in.
But branding isn’t about fitting in. It’s about getting to the root of who you are and owning the hell out of it.
If you're adding authenticity as a brand value, you're behind.
It’s not a value anymore. It’s a need. No longer a texture, a typeface or a tone of voice. Authenticity is coherence. It’s the space where your words, your actions and your beliefs actually match up.
This is where we have to stop thinking in style guides and start thinking in behaviour.
Because here’s the thing: design still matters. A lot. But it’s not there to perform authenticity, it’s simply there to amplify it. To make it felt. And if being 'on-brand' means being coherent, then it better be your brand you’re being coherent with. Otherwise? You’ll just end up with a mish-mash of nice-looking stuff that doesn’t say anything.
And yeah, maybe that’s why a lot of big brands are floundering right now. The bigger they get, the harder it is to act with conviction. You’ve got a brand manager reporting to a senior manager, reporting to a committee, reporting to a board so by the time anything gets signed off, it’s been stripped of personality and sanded down to fit a slide deck.
But if you’re a founder? If you’re building something real from the ground up?
You’ve got an advantage. You get to build a brand that actually feels like you.
That's how you become authentic.
You take a subjective, gut-level, human understanding of who you are and you show it. Loud, clear and consistently. That’s the only way it’s going to be believed.
