Anyone nervous about a job interview or a first date has likely heard the advice ‘just be yourself’ and thought: what does that mean? Sure, being yourself is a good start, but when you’re looking to make a connection — whether that’s with an employer, a romantic partner, or your potential customers — you need to be the best possible version of you.
Over the past few years, authenticity has become a buzzword in branding. For many brands, when they hear marketers talking about authenticity, it sounds a bit like a parent telling them to just be themselves: Sure, but who am I really? And which side of me should I show?
It’s true, though — authenticity is hugely important in 2025, when consumers are more marketing-savvy than ever before and exposed to an enormous amount of content across social media and personalized ads. Brands must find a way to communicate authentically, otherwise, they’ll lose out to competitors who build a stronger connection with their target audience.
Behind the Buzz: Defining Authenticity
Armed with good intentions and an Instagram account, many brands strive for authenticity. Few, however, have a clear definition of this fuzzy concept, nor a strategy for building it.
In short, authenticity is the alignment of a brand’s actions and values with its external communication. What’s important to understand is that while your brand’s authenticity is created at the intersection of your actions and communications, it exists in the minds of your customers. Authenticity is a matter of audience perception, and while they say actions speak louder than words, brands can’t build authenticity without both.
Authenticity can be created and communicated by aligning your communication style with your brand mission.
- Live by your values: This requires a clearly articulated brand mission and the core values that contribute to that mission. Every business decision should be made in the light of these values.
- Communicate consistently, with an impactful brand tone: Your brand tone should connect to your mission and values, whether you take a cheeky and playful tone or find an emotionally resonant and serious voice. Straying from this tone of voice will hurt authenticity.
Famous investor Warren Buffett said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.” Just like building a reputation, building an authentic brand takes work, and that hard work can be undone by a misstep in supply chain or brand messaging. Not only is it worth it, though, but it’s necessary to build a thriving brand in 2025, and customers reward authentic brands in many ways.
Why Authenticity Matters in 2025
Authenticity matters because consumers have more choice than ever before: in 2020, 90% of businesses said their industry has gotten more competitive, and more ways to distinguish between those choices. In addition, your customers, particularly those in younger demographics, are more media-savvy and ad-cynical than ever: evidence suggests that Gen Z increasingly view their own identity as a personal brand and is well-versed in presenting themselves on social channels to build this brand. Your business is likely using those same channels and techniques, so it’s vital to get it right.
Authenticity also impacts the bottom line, being an essential component of brand loyalty. A recent study found that just a 7% increase in brand loyalty can result in an 85% increase in customer lifetime value (CLV), showing that authenticity is worth the investment. By connecting your brand with your audience’s lifestyles and values, you create a relationship with your customers that transcends the transaction. Sure, those sneakers are comfortable and functional — but if they become part of your customers’ identity through authentically expressing shared values, they’ll be less price-sensitive and more brand-loyal.
Need any more convincing? 98% of consumers say brand authenticity matters when choosing products or services.
Key Strategies for Building an Authentic Brand
While authenticity requires being yourself to a degree, it also doesn’t happen by accident. Careful messaging, consistency, and attentiveness to your audience’s needs are essential in today’s world.
Engage with Your Audience
Overall, ‘genuine engagement with customers’ is the most important factor in authenticity, chosen by 33% of consumers. Building consistent channels of communication through strong customer service and a social media presence can demonstrate to customers that you share their values and concerns.
Social media has given brands an incredible tool for engaging with their audience and building authenticity through communication. Hosting Q&As on X is one great way to connect with your community.
Cultivate Honesty and Transparency
Transparency about practices and processes also strongly contributes to authenticity. 31% of consumers overall and 39% of 25 to 34-year-olds consider transparency the most important factor in a brand’s authenticity.
For many brands, transparency about materials, production and supply chains is closely connected to social causes. For example, Fair Trade certificates in chocolate, coffee and other industries reassure customers that business practices are both ethical and honest.Transparency doesn’t have to mean social responsibility, however. For budget brands, it might mean honesty about your money-saving practices, with an emphasis on how you can pass discounts on to customers. Notorious budget airline Ryanair, for example, made the press for considering charging to use the toilet on their flights. The CEO explained: “If you get rid of two toilets, you can get six [extra] seats on a 737”, emphasizing how this practice could impact the business. This transparency plays into Ryanair’s call-it-how-you-see-it brand personality, and while nobody expects luxury from a Ryanair flight, they do perceive authenticity from the brand.
Tailoring to Your Audience
Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all route to authenticity. Your approach needs to represent your origin story, your mission and values, as well as meeting your audience halfway based on their lifestyle and commitments.
- 18 to 24-year-olds are almost twice as likely as any other age group to consider a commitment to social responsibility important in brand authenticity.
- 25 – 34s pick transparency about practices and processes as the main contributor to brand authenticity (39%).
- Men are more likely to think that commitment to social responsibility is the most important factor in authenticity (15% vs. 11%).
- Older consumers, on the other hand, were more likely to pick out consistency in messaging and action, with one-third of 45 – 54-year-olds saying this is the most important factor.
Many brands and founders share much in common with their customers. After all, you’ve solved a problem for your customers, and there’s a particular reason why you focused on this niche. Communicate your similarities while tailoring your message to your audience’s values.
Watch Out for Authenticity Traps
While authenticity can be built, it can also be broken. Poor customer service is the #1 factor that impacts a sense of authenticity, with 41% of consumers saying it matters more to them than anything else.
A close second, with 32%, was ‘failing to acknowledge or correct mistakes’. This reveals a striking paradox of authenticity: to err is human, and customers can tolerate brands making mistakes so long as they’re acknowledged and rectified. When changing suppliers forced two-thirds of KFC franchises in the UK to close, KFC responded with wit and humility to create a paradigm case of crisis management. Post-crisis, KFC was getting more attention and had a more positive impression than before the shortage, thanks to its authentic response.
Lastly, while generative AI is a powerful tool for brands in scaling their marketing, be careful how and where you use it: 49% of respondents agree that generative AI harms perceptions of brand authenticity.
Nailing It: Brands Doing Authenticity Right
From social media to your marketing campaigns, authenticity is built in interactions. Here’s how three brands, with a powerful reputation for authenticity, pull it off.
Patagonia: Living Your Values
Founded by lifelong climber and activist Yvon Chouinard, Patagonia certainly had authentic origins. More than 50 years later, however, this global brand with an annual revenue of $1.5 billion retains its authentic status by consistently living up to its brand promise. By giving 1% of profits to environmental causes, prioritizing quality and longevity in its clothing lines and offering free repairs, Patagonia’s actions are perfectly aligned with its brand identity and mission, making it the most reputable brand in the United States.
Dove: Keeping Beauty Real
Beauty brand Dove has built a reputation for celebrating natural beauty, which is why it made perfect sense for the brand to come out and vow to never use AI-altered images in its marketing. This stance emphasized and enhanced Dove’s authenticity by reaffirming its commitment to natural beauty standards in a changing world.
Wendy’s: Authenticity Doesn’t Have to be Serious
While authenticity often stems from a brand’s mission and values, it doesn’t always have to mean a social or environmental commitment, nor a moral crusade. Fast food brand Wendy’s has a purpose — to treat its customers to a reliable and enjoyable meal. Wendy’s focuses on a relatable and playful brand identity and builds authenticity through its consistent use of a sassy brand tone on social media.
From Patagonia’s powerful actions to Wendy’s consistency in communication, it should be clear that authenticity is the outcome of aligning brand behavior with clear messaging. What’s more, in a fast-paced, digitally driven world, brand-building must be a flexible process, and measuring authenticity can drive your strategy.
Measuring Authenticity Internally and Externally
Given that few brands have a tangible concept of authenticity, even fewer understand the key metrics that can be used to track it. However, for brands to truly understand their audience and create impactful strategies, they must measure consumer response to their campaigns.
- Social Media Monitoring: Social media monitoring tracks mentions across social media, including Instagram, X and forums like Reddit and Quora. Software is used to aggregate comments based on positive mentions to provide a powerful quantitative assessment of your authenticity.
- Customer Feedback: Quantitative and qualitative customer feedback tracking is a powerful way of understanding whether consumers perceive your brand as authentic. Rather than asking directly about authenticity, use customer feedback surveys to explore whether customers feel valued, whether your communication and customer service are effective, and to gauge trust in your brand across quality, service and your core values.
- Brand Perception Surveys: These surveys assess whether consumers understand your brand’s mission and core values, and whether or not your behavior aligns with those promises. Crucially, brand perception surveys can identify attitudes among both your current customer base as well as the wider market, giving you insight into the demographics you’re not currently persuading to shop with your brand.
- Net Promoter Score: Net Promoter Score (NPS) calculates how many of your customers are being converted into brand advocates. A positive NPS indicates strong customer loyalty and an integration of your brand into the lifestyle of your customers.
Brands should use the appropriate tools for their audience, so a brand like Saga, offering travel insurance to retirees, might leverage customer feedback over social media monitoring. On the other hand, an e-commerce fashion brand built for a Gen Z audience may choose online brand sentiment analysis as the most important tracker. Whatever the measure, monitoring authenticity allows you to understand your impact and adapt your strategy to forge stronger connections with your audience.
Wrapping Up
Social media, influencer marketing, AI and the whole gamut of contemporary marketing tools give brands more opportunities than ever to build authentic connections with their audience on a mass scale — but they also mean your customers are more discerning than ever, and bombarded by competing content that seeks to win hearts, minds and wallets. Nailing authenticity in today’s marketplace might seem intimidating, but follow the data, and you’ll be halfway there.
Of course, before you can be yourself, you have to know who you are. Are you a Patagonia, as passionate about social and political causes as your customers? Or are you a Wendy’s — cheeky, playful, relatable and consistent? Invest in your brand story, find your brand mission and connect with your customers’ values.
