A major consumer brand announced this week that it has always, deeply, and authentically cared about the thing that is currently important to care about. The announcement, which came in the form of a carefully designed graphic with a sans-serif font and a muted color palette, emphasized that this care is not new and has in fact been central to the brand's values since its founding in 1987.
The brand's Chief Authenticity Officer — a position created in 2023 — confirmed that the company's commitment to this issue predates the current cultural moment by several decades, and that any suggestion that the brand is simply responding to consumer pressure is both inaccurate and hurtful to the team members who have been working on this initiative since last Tuesday.
"We've always believed in this," said a spokesperson, reading from a statement that had been approved by legal, marketing, and a crisis communications firm. "This announcement is simply us being more vocal about something that has always been in our DNA." The spokesperson declined to specify which DNA, exactly, or when it was sequenced.
The announcement was accompanied by a commitment to donate a percentage of proceeds from a limited-edition product to a foundation that the brand will establish for this purpose, pending the hiring of a foundation director, the creation of a board, and the completion of a strategic planning process expected to take eighteen months.
I've been writing about this kind of thing at Spoof Daily for a while, and the pattern is consistent. Brand discovers issue. Brand announces it has always cared about issue. Brand creates product. Brand donates small percentage of product revenue to issue. Brand moves on when issue is no longer trending.
The culture and community conversation around brand authenticity is genuinely interesting, though, because there's a real question underneath the satire: what would it look like for a brand to actually care about something? What's the difference between authentic values and performed values?
The answer, I think, is that authentic values show up in decisions that cost something. A brand that actually cares about an issue makes decisions that hurt its bottom line in service of that issue. A brand that performs caring makes decisions that help its bottom line while appearing to care about the issue. The difference is usually visible if you look at the decisions rather than the announcements.
The youth and media audience is particularly good at detecting the difference. Younger consumers have grown up with brand authenticity theater and have developed a fairly accurate detector for it. The brands that have actual credibility with this audience are the ones that made decisions before it was popular to make them.
The creative culture version of this is interesting — the way individual creators navigate the same pressure. The temptation to announce that you've always cared about whatever is currently important to care about. The difference between actually caring and performing caring. The cost of each.
The brand's limited-edition product is available now. A portion of proceeds will go to the foundation, once it's established. The brand has always cared about this. They just wanted you to know.