In order to be perceived as real, every financial institution must state its own identity, what it is. What is the self to which you and your offerings must be true? Second, you must carefully identify how you represent each offering, to ensure that it is what it says it is. What exactly does your bank say about its offerings, its branches, and its self? If you do no not know the answers to these questions, you cannot possibly hope to be viewed as authentic by your customers. In particular, to help you understand how to represent your identity in the marketplace, there are five key elements that provide the necessary guidance in setting the standards for authenticity. First, think of who you call yourself via naming. Designate any dimension of your enterprise to render that thing more authentic. The Walt Disney Company, for example, refers to the founder and thereby to the company’s origin, associating it with a real, live, breathing person who brought this entity into being. Second, consider what you say you are through your expressed statements. Think of your choice of media and the statements you make about your bank, your offerings, your customers, and your employees. The easiest way to be perceived as phony is to advertise things you are not. For the way to advertise in a way that comes off as incredibly authentic, think of Unilever’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” for Dove.

The third element is where and when you are encountered in your established places. ING Direct created European-style coffee houses in the US where financial professionals, in the role of baristas, engage customers in real conversations about their financial needs, creating a placemaking experience that does a terrific job of generating demand for its offerings. And Umpqua Bank in Portland has put the “retail” in “retail banking” by creating branches in which people actually want to spend their time.

Next, think about why you say you are in business, your declared motivations. Learn from the Ritz-Carlton where hotel managers take employees through its three-sentence credo every single day. Which public ideals for which you claim to exist do you hold and what are the incentives to encourage those ideals?

Finally, consider how you show what you are. All displayed appearances beyond text, including your logo, symbols, colors, and so forth need to induce a specific set of perceptions from others about you. Heinz Co. added “1869” to the logo – the date of the company’s founding – and changed its packaging to impart perceptions of natural vegetables as a means of rendering authenticity. How do current and potential customers perceive the total sum of your representations?

Authenticity, like the Experience Economy that brought it to the fore, is not something that matters for only a year or two. Although it may take a while – some companies take decades to learn how to do it well – there is no reason not to start here and now to embrace this new management discipline. If you desire to be perceived as authentic, do everything in your power for your institution, its places, and its offerings to be true to what you say you are.

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• Authenticity workshop 5th June.pdf