Tag: advertising

‘authenticity’

There’s something deeply ironic happening in the advertising world right now, and once you notice it, you can’t unsee it. Walk through any social media feed, flip through streaming commercials, or even glance at billboards, and you’ll spot them everywhere: ads that are trying desperately hard to look like they’re not trying at all.

The Rise of Faux Authenticity

We’ve entered an era where the most calculated marketing campaigns masquerade as candid moments. Shaky camera work that screams “shot on an Android phone in someone’s bedroom” has become a legitimate creative direction in Madison Avenue boardrooms. Influencers stumble over their words in perfectly imperfect takes, delivering what feels like spontaneous testimonials that were actually scripted, rehearsed, and approved by three different marketing teams.

This isn’t accidental. It’s the advertising industry’s response to a generation that grew up skeptical of traditional marketing. We learned to tune out the glossy, overproduced commercials of our parents’ era. So advertisers pivoted, adopting the aesthetic language of genuine user-generated content, TikTok videos, and authentic social media posts.

The Lo-Fi Aesthetic Takes Over

The technical term might be “lo-fi advertising,” but what we’re really talking about is manufactured authenticity. These campaigns feature:

  • Deliberately grainy footage that mimics smartphone cameras
  • “Natural” lighting that’s actually carefully staged
  • Influencers who seem relatable but are paid handsomely for their relatability
  • “Candid” testimonials from real customers who happen to have perfect skin and impeccable timing
  • Brands inserting themselves into memes and viral trends with the subtlety of a neon sign

The aesthetic borrows heavily from amateur content creation, but strip away the calculated casualness and you’ll find the same old marketing machinery humming beneath the surface.

Everything Is Content, Everything Is Sales

Perhaps what’s most exhausting about this trend is how it reflects a broader reality: we’ve reached a point where every possible human experience has been weaponized for commerce. Your morning routine? Content. Your workout struggle? Content. Your mental health journey? Definitely content, and probably sponsored by a meditation app.

The “authentic” advertising trend isn’t just about selling products—it’s about colonizing the last spaces where genuine human expression existed. When brands successfully mimic the look and feel of real, unfiltered human moments, they’re not just selling widgets; they’re training us to question whether anything we see is truly authentic.

The Authenticity Arms Race

This creates a fascinating paradox. As consumers become savvier about recognizing manufactured authenticity, advertisers have to work even harder to seem genuine. It becomes an arms race of realness, where each side tries to outmaneuver the other. Brands study viral content like anthropologists, analyzing why certain low-quality videos resonate while their high-budget campaigns fall flat.

Meanwhile, actual content creators find themselves caught in the middle. The platforms that reward authentic content are the same ones flooded with brands imitating that authenticity. It becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between someone sharing a genuine moment and someone whose genuine moment happens to include strategic product placement.

The Fatigue Is Real

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes with navigating this landscape. It’s the mental effort required to constantly evaluate: Is this real? Is this sponsored? Is this person genuinely excited about this face cream, or are they really excited about their mortgage payment?

The lo-fi advertising trend preys on our desire for connection and authenticity, packaging those feelings back to us as products to purchase. It’s emotionally manipulative in a way that traditional advertising, for all its flaws, never quite managed to be.

Where Do We Go From Here?

The irony is thick: in an attempt to seem more human, advertising has become more artificial than ever. The energy spent crafting the perfect “imperfect” moment, the resources devoted to seeming effortless, the calculations behind appearing genuine—it’s all deeply, absurdly inauthentic.

Perhaps the only authentic response is to acknowledge the absurdity. We live in a world where every possible thing is being done to sell widgets to people one way or another, as you put it. Recognizing this reality doesn’t make us cynics; it makes us informed consumers navigating an increasingly complex media landscape.

The challenge isn’t to find truly authentic advertising—that might be an oxymoron. Instead, it’s to maintain our ability to recognize and value genuine human connection, even in a world that’s constantly trying to monetize those very connections.

After all, the most authentic thing we can do might be to admit that we’re all a little tired of the performance.

AI Is In The Process Of Severely Disrupting Traditional Advertising

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I have just enough advertising experience — with is actually very little — to know that a tipping point is going to arrive soon when ad execs might be put in charge of some larger-than-expected ad campaigns because of AI. All we need is a recession.

And I think the moment that recession hits a certain point of contraction, instead of hiring an outside firm to do this or that print campaign, our evil corporate overlords will simply get their own ad execs to use ChatGPT (or whatever) to do it instead.

In fact, I suspect the bleeding edge of professional development for things like newspapers will be to simply train anyone with a brain and some knowledge of advertising to use ChatGPT to shoot out a pretty slick ad campaign.

And as the recession grows more severe, more and more disruption will happen to the advertising industry to the point that whatever comes out the other side won’t be recognizable.

I think coding will go through a similar transformation if there’s a severe recession, but the disruption make take longer to actually kick in because “vibe coding” will only get you so far with mission critical software –at least for now.

The Petite Singularity May Make The Next Recession Severe

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It definitely seems as though we’re headed into a recession for various reasons — some of them really dumb. At the same time, a number of developments in AI suggest that any recession we have will be significantly more severe than it might be otherwise.

The software industry and the advertising industry look like they are going to be severely disrupted this year and that disruption will grow staggering if we dip into any sort of recession. AI is now officially “just good enough” to do a lot of jobs that once were really well paying.

If we have a recession, I could see a lot of established advertising firms go under simply because instead of being paid to design ads, companies will expect advertising executives to use ChatGPT to create campaigns. That sounds pretty crazy right now, but when you’re in a recession, some crazy shit can happen when people are looking to save as much money as possible.

And if the advertising industry implodes, there will be a ripple effect across the economy.

The software industry may be disrupted, but I doubt it will actually implode like what might happen to advertising. Vibe coding is fun and all, but you still need an adult to make sure bad shit doesn’t happen. With the advertising stuff, meanwhile, the end result is so great — and self-evident — that, lulz, there’s no need for many, many jobs that otherwise once existed.

But only time will tell, I suppose.