Bob Jacobson reviews “Authenticity” by Gilmore and Pine

Jim Gilmore and Joe Pine, authors of the 1999 marketing classic, The Experience Economy: Work is Theater and Every Business a Stage, have just published a new book Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want (see also this post).

In a review Bob Jacobson calls it “an important, simultaneously prescriptive and cautionary addition to the rapidly growing corpus of literature on experiential marketing” and “a manifesto for our time that can’t be ignored”.

“Transformations, which bond companies and customers irrevocably, occur only when authenticity — customer self-identity and the brand experience — are total. They’re beyond intentional design. But at the highest level of manipulable reality, the generation of experiences, the higher the degree of authenticity, as perceived by customers, is the critical differentiating factor in the quality of experiences that companies offer to their customers. “

Read full review