You can usually tell when a company is trying too hard.
The language gets more formal than the people who work there. Simple ideas turn into business-speak. The photos show a highly idealized version of the company or its customers. Claims get bigger and less believable. A small or mid-sized company starts presenting itself like a Fortune 500 corporation because someone decided that’s what “professional” is supposed to look like.
More often, we’ve seen the opposite happen. Interesting companies with smart, funny, thoughtful, or genuinely different people doing meaningful work somehow flatten themselves into marketing that could belong to anybody. The real company is usually way more interesting and better than the version it puts into the world.
When someone asks how to create more authentic marketing, that’s where we start. Not by making everything more casual, showing more behind-the-scenes photos, or telling the founder to “be vulnerable.” We look for gaps between who the company really is, who it’s trying to reach, and what its marketing is communicating.
Authenticity isn’t a look
Contrary to what you might have read on LinkedIn, there’s no visual style, tone of voice, or production technique that makes marketing authentic. A testimonial shot on someone’s phone can feel completely manufactured. A beautifully produced three-camera interview can feel completely genuine. Line drawings might be perfect for one company and ridiculous for another.
We worked with a wealth management firm whose previous marketing direction was highly polished and corporate. There was nothing inherently wrong with the work. It just didn’t feel much like the thoughtful, intelligent people their clients described.
We went in a different direction. Instead of polished executive headshots, we used New York Times-inspired line illustrations with more of an editorial feel. The materials became more content-heavy and more specific to the prospect rather than relying on the usual glossy financial-services treatment. It still looked professional. It was simply a different—and much better fitting—definition of professional.
Authentic marketing isn’t about lowering the production value until everything looks homemade. It’s about making choices that fit the company and the people it wants to reach.
Personal taste is not brand strategy
This gets particularly tricky in small and mid-sized companies because owners and senior leaders are so close to the work. They’re often making the final call on the website, logo, photography, colors, messaging, and everything else customers see.
Creative reviews can quickly become conversations about personal preference. Someone loves blue. Someone hates the photograph. The CEO wants the company to look more sophisticated. A competitor has a website that the owner thinks is cool.
Years ago, we were working through a naming process with a client. We don’t love naming by committee, but in this case, a group was involved, and one option drew strong support around the table. The final decision maker listened carefully as people explained why they thought it would work. By the time it got to him, everyone pretty much knew where the room stood. And when it was his turn, he said, “I hate it. Let’s go with it.”
He knew his personal taste was unique, and he understood that his own preference wasn’t the assignment. He had listened to why others thought the name fit the organization and the people it needed to reach, and that mattered more to him than whether he personally liked it.
Leadership preference isn’t irrelevant. The people running a company know things an outside firm never will, and they have to be comfortable standing behind the brand. But “I like it” and “this is right for us and our customers” are two very different judgments.
Consider Walmart and Nordstrom. Both can sell an Apple product, but almost everything surrounding that product feels different. Walmart can make the product and price prominent and emphasize value and convenience. Nordstrom can put a product into an aspirational lifestyle image where the setting, styling, and mood are part of what’s being communicated.
Neither is more authentic. They’re different companies serving different expectations, and plenty of people shop at both. The useful question isn’t which approach you personally prefer. It’s which one makes sense coming from you.
People look for signals that say, “This is for someone like me”
Edelman has tracked the importance of “someone like me” in its trust research for years. In its 2026 Trust Barometer Special Report on brand growth, 76% of people in the study’s more trust-insular group said they trusted “someone like me link to article on edelman.com. opens in a new tab.” when sharing brand information. Friends and family ranked even higher at 82%. Edelman’s larger observation is especially useful here: brands don’t get to simply declare themselves relevant and trustworthy. Those qualities have to be proven through experience.
“Someone like me” doesn’t mean every photograph needs to feature someone who looks exactly like the customer. People recognize themselves through circumstances, priorities, values, expectations, problems, and even taste. They get a sense of whether a company understands their world and whether it feels like a place for them.
That’s why authenticity can express itself in completely different ways. The Walmart customer looking for a good price and the Nordstrom customer looking for a particular experience aren’t asking those companies to communicate the same way. And sometimes they’re the same person on different days.
Better tools can make bad marketing look pretty damn good
Technology has made it easier to create another kind of gap. We’re seeing more and more marketing where the production value dramatically exceeds the thinking behind it.
AI can produce remarkably polished copy, imagery, websites, presentations, and other materials for someone without any marketing experience. Without enough context, direction, and critical feedback, though, it tends to pull toward patterns that already exist. At a time when being distinctive has never mattered more, AI can homogenize the thinking and then help us broadcast that sameness farther and faster. The result can look finished while still sounding like everyone else, overstating the company’s capabilities, or missing what actually matters to the customer.
We’ve seen this movie before. Desktop publishing put professional design tools into the hands of millions of people, but owning the software didn’t make everyone a designer. Speaking a language doesn’t automatically make someone good at writing headlines, either.
The tools have gotten better, which makes judgment more important, not less. We can now produce—and distribute—a bad idea faster than ever.
Sometimes the real brand is sitting in the parking lot
Years ago, we were working with a transportation company that wanted a tougher, darker identity. Internally, we started calling the creative direction “Gotham City.” Think steel, metal, blacks and grays, great equipment, and a certain Harley-Davidson toughness.
There was truth in it. This was hard work done by tough people, and we had heard enough during our research to know that grit belonged in the brand. We developed concepts in that direction, and they looked pretty damn cool.
Then we went to one of the company’s yards for a photo shoot.
Instead of blacks and grays and metal we’d imagined, the place was filled with trucks in practically every color of the rainbow. When we asked why, we learned that qualified drivers were extremely difficult to attract and retain. Drivers who reached certain milestones could choose their next truck, including the manufacturer, features, and color. More safe miles meant more opportunity to personalize the equipment.
The company could sell plenty of loads, but its ability to grow depended heavily on having enough qualified, capable, and safe drivers to handle them. Suddenly, that yard full of colorful trucks said something important about the company: good drivers had earned the right to choose the equipment they would spend an enormous part of their working lives in.
Our client and our team reached essentially the same conclusion: Gotham City wasn’t quite them. We didn’t abandon the toughness. Photography and videos captured real people doing real work—drivers securing loads, people working around the equipment, sparks flying in the shop. The grit was real. So were the bright trucks and the company’s investment in its drivers.
This is part of what happens when we build a client’s marketing infrastructure. Research gives us a starting point, but we also have to pay attention to what we find once we’re inside the company. Sometimes the most useful evidence isn’t in the research report. It’s parked outside.
If your marketing feels fake, start looking for the gaps
You don’t necessarily need another research initiative to make progress. Pull up your website, sales decks, brochures, recruiting materials, or whatever customers see most often, and look at it with a little suspicion. Honestly, that’s what we do.
Listen for language nobody at the company would ever use in a real customer conversation. Look for claims that sound impressive but don’t have much evidence behind them. Notice where you’re trying especially hard to look bigger, cooler, more sophisticated, more innovative, or more caring than the experience can support. Ask whether you’re borrowing the look and language of companies you admire instead of expressing something that is actually true about yours.
Then flip it. What’s genuinely interesting about the company that barely appears in the marketing? What do customers or employees appreciate that everyone inside the company has started taking for granted? What happens inside the business that demonstrates what you value better than another paragraph saying you value it?
A company saying it cares about its people is a claim. A yard full of trucks that drivers earned the right to choose is evidence.
We’d also change one question in the next creative review. Instead of spending the meeting debating, “Do we like it?” ask, “Does this feel like us, and will it feel right to the people we’re trying to reach?” You may still disagree about the answer, but you’ll be arguing about something more useful than someone’s favorite color.
In our experience, making marketing feel more authentic often involves removing things rather than adding them: the inflated claim, the borrowed voice, the owner’s personal preference masquerading as brand strategy, the image that could belong to anyone in the category, or the polished paragraph that nobody in the building would ever say.
Then there’s more room for the real company to show up.
