What sustains trust in a brand is coherence

Translated from the original Spanish article.

“Be authentic.” It’s the most repeated piece of brand advice of the past decade. And it’s overrated.

A brand must be true to a clear, well-defined identity. That much is true. And that identity has to be tied to the company’s real culture: it is the framework on which everything else operates.

Identity makes us knowable, predictable in a certain way. And that, far from being bad, is a good thing. In predictability lies certainty.

Because what really sustains trust in a brand is coherence: living up to that identity, again and again. That is what’s expected of it: that it stays true to what it said it was, that it doesn’t abandon the elements that define its essence out of opportunism, cowardice or self-interest.

In short, that it doesn’t disappoint.

And here lies the confusion, because the word itself never promised what we ask of it today. “Authentic” comes from the Greek authéntēs: one who acts on his own authority, the master of his own deeds. And in art, the authentic was the genuine original, the opposite of a forgery.

Authority and origin. Not “showing it all.”

And yet that’s what it has drifted into: naked communication. While what makes us human connects us, unfiltered authenticity is chaotic, a vague abstraction in constant flux. As Herminia Ibarra puts it: “Being authentic doesn’t mean they can hold you up to the light and see right through you.”

And in all their undressing, some forgot that nudity is an impertinence no one wants to dance with.