Think about what makes the people in your life authentic. Do they maintain their sardonic sense of humor, no matter the situation? Have they cultivated a unique sense of style? Do they hold strong convictions that rarely waver? However authentic people show up, you can rely on them to be true to themselves.
The same is true for authentic brands. Learn what brand authenticity is, why it’s important, and how to build it to promote customer loyalty.
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What is brand authenticity?
Brand authenticity is the perception that a brand’s actions and messages align with its mission and beliefs. Authentic brands consistently act in alignment with their core values, whether in launching a new product, providing customer service, crafting a social media post, sending a newsletter, or partnering with another business.
Why is brand authenticity important for ecommerce brands?
Perceived brand authenticity helps customers understand your brand and what to expect from it. This clarity of purpose and consistency of action helps build trust and brand loyalty. That trust can dramatically influence purchase decisions: In a 2023 survey, 79% of Gen Z—whose spending power will top $12 trillion by 2030—said it’s more important than ever to trust the brands they buy from.
The ecommerce space is highly competitive, with over 28 million global ecommerce sites. Brand authenticity can help your business stand out from the competition and build a personal connection with your target audience.
Purchasing from an authentic brand with a strong brand identity can even help reinforce a customer’s sense of self and identity, making them feel part of something bigger than themselves. When this happens, the customer can generate value for your company beyond their purchases. For example, if they recommend your brand to friends and family, they contribute to a powerful word-of-mouth marketing flywheel.
Elements of brand authenticity
Four key elements contribute to your brand’s authenticity:
1. Purpose
Brand purpose is the reason your brand exists beyond pure monetary gain. Patagonia's purpose, for example, is “to save our home planet” by promoting sustainable products and practices, while Columbia Sportswear aims “to relentlessly push the limits of innovation to help you explore the outdoors in comfort.”
A brand’s purpose can help employees and consumers connect and feel aligned to its goal. To determine your brand purpose, identify your overarching goals and the long-term impact you aim to have on the world (e.g., protecting the environment or empowering your farmers and producers).
Write a brand manifesto that clearly and succinctly communicates why your brand exists and a vision statement that paints a picture of the world you want to create. From there, develop your purpose by using storytelling to create a clear narrative about your ambitions and what inspired them. Share the passion or problem that inspired you to found the business.
2. Beliefs
Beliefs are the values and principles that guide your brand’s actions (e.g., sustainability, innovation, equality). Ideally, these are more than words on a poster in the office. Eighty-two percent of shoppers want a brand’s values to align with their own—and 75% will stop purchasing from a brand over a conflict in values.
For example, BMW believes in “the joy of driving,” focusing on performance, agility, and a sporty driving experience. Mercedes-Benz believes in “luxury and innovation,” emphasizing comfort, elegance, and cutting-edge technology. Both are German luxury cars, but each has a unique belief about the driving experience.
When your brand genuinely lives and breathes its beliefs and values, they become a North Star for decisions during times of uncertainty. First step: Draft an action-oriented mission statement by analyzing what your company does, how it does it, and (most importantly) why it does it. From there, you can put those beliefs into action in several ways. You might:
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Use values to guide decisions, including product development and operations
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Add values guidelines to employee onboarding, annual reports, and training documents
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Get certified as a B Corporation to show accountability for your beliefs
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Try social impact marketing by sharing stories that align with your beliefs and donating to related charities
There’s no one way to do it, but when you nail down your core beliefs and let them guide your decisions, you’re practicing brand authenticity.
3. Personality
Your brand personality is the personified impression your brand leaves on people. It’s a set of traits, similar to the character traits you see in people. It encompasses your:
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Brand voice. How you speak to your customers and the world. Is your brand serious or light-hearted? Does it have mass appeal or exude exclusivity?
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Visual style. What do your color palettes, photography styles, and typography choices say about your brand?
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Marketing approach. How do you plan on reaching your customers?
Your brand personality will help set you apart from competitors. For example, Geico and State Farm have similar insurance offerings, but Geico’s brand personality is relatable and entertaining, while State Farm’s emphasizes reliability and integrity. This distinction helps them attract different consumer bases and stand out from more generic competitors.
As you hone your brand personality, distill the most important elements into a set of brand guidelines. These will help ensure your personality is conveyed consistently across channels.
4. Consistency
Authentic brands put their money where their mouths are over and over—whether it aligns with trends or not. Brand consistency means customers have a reliable and cohesive experience no matter where, when, or how they interact with your brand.
To reap the benefits of brand consistency, both your product quality and your brand expression need to be consistent. On the product side, implement and improve quality assurance and control standards to ensure that everything you sell meets the standard you promise and that your customers expect. On the brand expression side, enforce your brand guidelines across channels and communicate with customers on a predictable schedule, whether on social media, email, or elsewhere.
Examples of ecommerce brand authenticity
Successful brands build brand authenticity by acting consistently, reliably, and predictably. These three ecommerce brands bring across all four key elements of authenticity to the forefront:
My Skin Feels
My Skin Feels makes skin care products that are sustainable and easy to understand. After 15 years working in beauty and wellness, founder Danielle Close realized the industry wasn’t making enough progress on sustainability—and decided to do something about it herself. “If no one’s doing anything, I have to do something to prove that it can be done,” she says on Shopify Masters. “If I can do it, everyone else can do it too.”
This decision led to products that are better for the environment: the brand’s products are 99% natural, vegan, and made with organic ingredients rescued from the food and drink industry that would otherwise go to waste.
To break through the noise of skin care jargon, My Skin Feels opts for simple, straightforward names. The moisturizer is called “Moisturized,” so when shoppers see the tube, they know exactly what they’re going to get: “My Skin Feels Moisturized.”
My Skin Feels reflects this accessible, passion-led authenticity throughout the brand:
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Purpose. The brand’s stated purpose is: “To make products that focus on how they make you feel, all the while being as planet-friendly, people-friendly, and skin-friendly as possible.”
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Belief. “We believe skin care should make you feel good without any cost to the planet.”
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Personality. My Skin Feels is optimistic, approachable, encouraging, and down-to-earth with an abstract illustration style that evokes the ocean and natural ingredients.
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Consistency. Danielle embodies the brand’s accessible tone by personally promoting her product and speaking with customers at in-person pop-ups and markets.
Sugardoh
Aliyah Marandiz founded the beauty company Sugardoh to sell hair removal products that use sugaring, a gentle and natural alternative to waxing. She uses her personal story to make her brand feel intimate and accessible.
She explains on the brand’s website: “As a hairy brown girl with very sensitive skin, I felt like everything on the market was promoting hair removal at all costs and my skin was collateral damage.” After discovering sugaring, she made it her mission “to replace your at-home hair removal method with compostable sugaring paste.”
Aliyah works on building brand authenticity across her business:
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Purpose. The brand’s stated purpose is to provide “a gentle and natural alternative to waxing.” The implied purpose is also to remove some of the taboos around body hair and hair removal.
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Belief. Sugardoh believes hair removal doesn’t have to come at the expense of your skin health.
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Personality. The brand is honest, encouraging, informative, and personal. With CTAs like, “Join our happy, hairy family,” the brand provides a wealth of tutorials and FAQs to bring a sense of openness and relatability to hair removal—all while having fun.
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Consistency. Sugardoh has cultivated a loyal following on TikTok by consistently engaging and responding to feedback from its community, involving followers in product development, pricing, and other brand decisions. In all of this messaging, Aliyah has also never shied away from sharing her personal story at the root of the brand.
Kloo
Claudia Snoh and her mother, Mariella Cho, a licensed coffee sommelier, founded the coffee concentrate brand Kloo. They aim to provide a simple “pour and enjoy” coffee experience so people “can spend less time worrying about techniques and equipment and more time finding flavors you love.”
When Kloo first launched, Claudia and Mariella discovered that a lot of people thought the brand was about aesthetics. They thought the product was just another concentrated coffee product in a cool bottle, completely missing the entirely new expertise and craft that went into the beverage. After sourcing lots of consistent feedback, they leaned into their brand story and decided to highlight the credentials that underpin their production process.
“Prioritize one thing [about your brand] and repeat that story everywhere,” Claudia says on Shopify Masters. “On your website, on social email, SMS, in your elevator pitch—repeat that story everywhere you go.”
Claudia and Mariella keep the brand authentic by focusing on:
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Purpose. Kloo’s stated purpose is, “Bringing sommelier-grade coffee to the world, one sip at a time.”
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Belief. You don’t have to be a coffee sommelier to experience the magic of coffee. Instead, you can simply open a bottle of Kloo and appreciate the craft that went into it.
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Personality. Kloo aims to be premium, elevated, and personal with a modern minimal aesthetic that helps reinforce the newness and expertise behind the product.
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Consistency. Kloo consistently showcases the founders’ expertise and the quality of their products on their website and in marketing content. It produced a video highlighting Mariella's journey to becoming a coffee sommelier and redesigned its website to focus on the quality and origins of the beans.
xxx FAQ
What is an example of brand authenticity?
Brand authenticity refers to the perception that a brand’s actions and messages align with its purpose and beliefs. A good example of brand authenticity is a customer support team responding to customer complaints in a voice and tone consistent with the brand’s values, or a personable company sourcing and featuring user-generated content on its website.
How do you measure brand authenticity?
You can measure brand authenticity with social listening and customer sentiment tools, your Net Promoter Score, and product reviews, which let you know if your brand promise is meeting expectations.
How do you maintain brand authenticity?
With every big move you make—launching a new product or an ad campaign—ask yourself whether you can deliver on your promise, stay consistent, and reinforce brand values.
