authenticity on the internet

Following the recent deaths of Jeff Goldblum and George Clooney* the internet has become the new obits pages for the worlds media...

*ok so these were rumours started on the internet that within hours had circumnavigated the globe. Friends of the stars contacted agents to check what had happened and to send their condolences. The question is a age old one of authenticity sites such as wiki and google to some extent all seem to deal with perspectives of authenticity. It seems that we also like to enjoy the detective nature of finding out your truth.

The authentic story

I came across an article discussing the story of companies and how we track them. Think with companies sourcing form a number of different companies the story and authenticity is so important.

See article here

Understanding the authenticity of a company

Up until innocent smoothies, it seems as though companies would strive to be as big as possible and the idea of being authentic or believable in that their story seemed to be unimportant. Since innocent however and also an ever growing move towards customer feedback and power. Companies are more and more informing people about their story and what they are up to. While this is not a new thing. Keeping with innocent who have now been trading for over 10 years now there does seem to be a growing development into this kind of storytelling. 

The story has become crucial and just as important as the product. However each story seems to hold true only within a very small area. For example companies stories have to be believable. So does this limit the size of future businesses? will it mean more niche markets? A company for every group perhaps? You can see the original stories of companies becoming disconnected with their original stand. Innocent for example are now the market leaders in the smoothie market and have a huge annual turnover, yet their story is of a small independent company. In marketing terms a David against Goliath battle. In this case though David did exactly what he did in the fable and now you start to question who is the minnow. And so does it now follow that the original story of small independent company in touch with their customers hold true?