However, authenticity is far easier to pull off when your product has some real-world qualities that its competitors lack. The most striking recent example is that of America’s craft beers. As drinkers turn against the pallid swill pumped out by mass-market brewers, the craft brewers have almost doubled their market share in the five years to 2014. Although many long-established, heavily advertised but mediocre products are losing force, and the fickleness of consumers is making it harder for them to maintain premium prices, for those firms that get the product right and have a genuine story to tell, the rewards can still be huge. The textbook example of this is Apple, whose devices’ superior design and ease of use make it a powerful brand in a commoditised market. Last year it had only 6% of the revenues in the personal-computer market, but 28% of the profits. That’s real authenticity.
