"Authenticity is the thing consumers respond to the most," says Diego Scotti, VP of Global Advertising for American Express.
Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore are working on their next book, focused on authenticity as a new consumer sensibility. Gilmore writes:
In the Agrarian Economy, the dominant purchase criteria was Availability (price being set by supply-and-demand, and only influencing the quantity of materials purchased in the marketplace). In the Industrial Economy, Cost became the dominant driver of purchases as Mass Production made more and more goods affordable to the masses. In the Service Economy, Quality came to dominate, when the performance of offerings became most important as consumers increasingly rely upon others to perform certain activities on their behalf.
And now, in the Experience Economy, in an increasingly unreal world of staged places and mediated events, consumers want Authenticity. Thus AMEX desires to "be associated with people of substance, whose success is based on real achievement" and entices celebrities with the opportunity to craft their life-stories (as a commercial) and not just monetary compensation. (Indeed, selling out for the big bucks is not "being real".)
