Let's Stop Pretending Corporate Comms Can Be Authentic
The harder we perform authenticity, the more inauthentic we become
Authenticity in corporate comms never existed in the first place
When ChatGPT burst onto the scene a couple of years ago many comms pros didn’t panic. The writing the tool generated was clumsy, anodyne, often laughable. It’s a decent first draft, they shrugged, but you still need experienced comms pros to fill in the blanks, edit, and polish. We’re not going anywhere.
Two and a half years later and it’s clear to many in our field that AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude can produce high-quality writing that can be passed on with very little to no editing. You may have even passed on AI-written material without letting anyone know (🤫our secret), and you may have even consumed AI content without even knowing it (🤦our secret).
As comms colleagues slowly accept that AI-generated writing is here to stay, new laments for maintaining relevancy in comms have emerged. Among them is the claim that humans are needed to create or ensure “authentic” comms.
The siren call for authenticity isn’t new. Ivy Lee is widely recognized as the founder of modern public relations. The slogan of his PR firm, Parker and Lee, established in 1904, was “Accuracy, Authenticity, and Interest.” (Among other firsts, Lee pioneered the press release.)
Alas, according to Michael Turney, professor emeritus of communications, Lee himself “ruefully admitted that even he couldn't honestly explain the actions of some of his clients well enough to make them palatable to the general public.”
Critics and scholars argue that Lee’s work sometimes involved manipulating facts or perceptions to protect powerful corporate interests, including his work for John D. Rockefeller to spin a crackdown and massacre of striking miners in Colorado (the 1914 Ludlow Massacre), to say nothing of Lee’s work as an unpaid PR advisor to Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
An inconvenient truth in corporate comms is that “authenticity” is impossible to achieve because—from day one in 1904—it never existed in our industry. It’s not that authenticity is difficult to achieve in corp comms. I’m arguing that authenticity is a conceptual impossibility in an industry whose primary function is to craft strategic messages that serve corporate interests, organizational narratives, and business objectives, regardless of what’s happening behind the scenes.
It’s time to abandon the notion of authenticity in comms and redirect the energy to fights that actually matter.
In this essay I explore:
what we mean by “authentic”
performative authenticity
fooling our audiences
ethics of manufactured authenticity
alternatives to the authenticity argument
I conclude with a call to redirect our energy to existential fights that matter for the future of our profession.
What We Mean by ‘Authentic’
What does authenticity even mean? My heavy-as-ship’s-anchor edition of the Oxford English Dictionary offers two relevant definitions:
Of first-hand authority, original.
Entitled to acceptance or belief as being in accordance with fact, or as stating fact; reliable, trustworthy.
The first definition creates an interesting paradox for comms pros. By this measure, corporate communications is already authentic because it reports what the “authority” wants to say. Whatever the executive or business—the authority1—decides is, ipso facto, an authentic message because it’s from that authority.
But that’s not how most comms pros use the term. We don’t like to think of ourselves as corporate mouthpieces. Instead, when claiming comms pros are needed to stoke the flames of authentic comms, we invoke the second definition—communications that are factual, reliable, and trustworthy. Communications that are “real.”
The problem? That kind of authenticity has never been the primary goal of corp comms. Our job is to shape perception, manage reputation, and advance organizational narratives—internally and externally (mixternally!). We’re not documentarians or journalists2; we’re corporate strategists.
Think about the most basic functions of our profession:
We ghostwrite messages for executives who couldn’t write a birthday greeting
We perform linguistic acrobatics to avoid calling a thing what it is (“reduction in force” vs. “layoff”)
We massage unflattering facts into “opportunities” and “challenges”
We create frameworks that ensure everyone stays consistently on-message
We filter employee stories through the lens of what serves the corporate narrative
We ensure gossip and rumors stay at the proverbial water cooler
We cry out for “authenticity” in comms when the day’s assignment is to create out of thin air someone else’s quote for a press release.
We plead for “authenticity” in comms when the last story that will ever see the light of day is the profile of Jenny in Accounting who is part of a 15% across-the-board RIF…er, layoff.
We claim to be the guardians of “authentic” comms when every. single. thing. we. create. is reviewed, edited, and “approved” by 16 stakeholders, some of whom are twice-removed from the topic at hand.
We strut around LinkedIn wearing our authenticity badges, yet we self-censor because our bosses—who are first-level connections—will wince at what we3 really have to say about the CEO’s very public position on [insert hot button political topic].
None of our work is inherently nefarious. It’s simply the reality of what corporate comms is designed to do. But “authentic” it is not.
So what do comms pros mean when they cry for “authentic” comms? Ask 20 of them and get 20 different answers. It’s the ol’ “employee engagement” debate under a new name: difficult to define but accepted as fact because it either sounds right or justifies the comms role/activity, or both.
The Performance Paradox
The pursuit of authenticity in corporate comms creates a fundamental paradox: the more deliberately you try to appear authentic, the less authentic you become. The moment an executive announces they’re going to “speak from the heart,” you can bet what follows has been crafted, reviewed, and approved by at least three people… and practiced.
I’m reminded of David Foster Wallace’s observations about the advertising industry co-opting anti-advertising sentiments. He noted that as audiences became more media-savvy and cynical—recognizing the manipulative intent behind ads—advertisers responded by adopting a self-aware, ironic tone. The effect was to make viewers feel “in on the joke,” thus neutralizing the manipulative efforts.
Are comms pros as manipulative as advertisers? We script “unscripted” moments. We choreograph spontaneity. We manufacture the appearance of candor. We’ve all been in that meeting discussing how to make the exec appear more “authentic” and “human” in the next town hall. Lose the tie! Shoot the video with an iPhone, selfie-style! In the end, the audience—employees—know there’s a team working behind the scenes to help the executive seem more approachable, genuine, authentic.
Advertising’s effects are corrosive, Wallace said:
An ad that pretends to be art is—at absolute best—like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what’s sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill’s real spirit, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair.
Could you swap comms for ad in Wallace’s statement? I won’t go so far as to say comms’ stage directions and scripting lead to despair—we’re not that powerful—but the effects of our work could cause confusion in moments when employees truly need genuine leadership.
The Audience Isn't Fooled
Perhaps the most damning indictment of “authentic” corporate communications is that audiences—especially employees—see right through it.
Year after year, trust barometers and engagement surveys show the same pattern: employees are deeply skeptical of corporate messaging. Despite decades of authenticity consulting and countless initiatives to make corporate communications more “human” and “real,” employee trust in leadership communication remains stubbornly low.
Edelman, for example, reports that 68% of their 2025 survey respondents believe business leaders “purposely mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations” (up from 61% the year before). So, exec comms is already starting from a disadvantage of disbelief.
Employees have sophisticated bullshit detectors after years of exposure to corporate speak (and 1984). They can sense when something is overly messaged versus genuinely direct. They can tell when “transparency” is selective and when “candor” is carefully calibrated.
What’s particularly ironic is that attempts to appear more authentic often trigger these BS detectors more strongly than straightforward corporate messaging. Employees don’t necessarily expect authenticity from corp comms—but they do expect consistency and respect for their intelligence.
The trust paradox is that claiming authenticity often undermines it. When you keep telling people how authentic you’re being, they immediately become suspicious that you’re not. Despite widespread efforts to appear “real,” trust plummets.
What employees need isn’t “authenticity”—it’s communications that acknowledge reality as they experience it, that respect their intelligence, and that don’t insult them with transparent attempts to manipulate their perceptions.
The Ethics of Manufactured Authenticity
Ethical dilemmas abound in corporate comms. For example, when should a company disclose potential layoffs, product problems, or financial difficulties?
Add the authenticity charade to the list. Is it dishonest (or ethically problematic) to craft “authentic-sounding” communications, or is it simply an accepted convention of corporate life?
Everyone knows the CEO’s “personal” email or keynote speech was probably written by someone else, just as we know actors aren’t actually the characters they play. The ethical issue isn’t the construction itself but the pretense that it isn’t constructed.
When we present heavily managed, strategically crafted messages as spontaneous authentic expression, we’re engaging corporate magic. We’re crafting the message and the illusion that the message wasn’t crafted.
This becomes ethically problematic when:
We use “authenticity” to manipulate emotions and trust
We selectively disclose information while claiming complete transparency
We make meta-claims about our comms (“speaking candidly,” “being real”) that contradict the actual process of creating those communications
There’s also a deeper ethical question for us comms pros: Are we being honest with ourselves about what we do for a living? By promoting authenticity as a value proposition, are we engaging in a form of professional self-deception?
A Better Way Forward
If authenticity is an impossible standard for corporate communications, what should we aim for instead? What framework could replace this false idol?
Perhaps instead of authenticity, we could focus on:
Intentionality: Being purposeful and deliberate about what we communicate and why, without pretending it’s unfiltered expression; avoiding manufactured casualness (salutations that are lowercase, really? hi team… )
Respect: Treating audiences (especially employees) as intelligent, deserving of thoughtful, substantive communication (you’ve got a bigger problem if you think your employees are idiots)
Coherence: Ensuring messages align with observable reality and organizational actions (e.g., call a layoff a layoff)
Clarity: Communicating with precision and thoughtfulness (follow Hemingway’s advice: “Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English.”)
Utility: Creating comms that genuinely help employees understand and navigate their work environment (don’t obfuscate; don’t talk about three topics when you need to discuss just one; explain WIFM)
None of these qualities requires claims of “authenticity,” but they might better serve both organizational goals and employee needs. (In the end, some of it may even become genuinely authentic comms.)
More importantly, unlike the chimera of corporate authenticity, these are qualities we can actually deliver.
Pick Your Battle
The next time you see a comms pro defending their role by claiming to provide “authenticity,” ask them what they mean by the word. The ensuing verbal contortions will tell you everything you need to know about the emptiness of the concept.
It’s time to stop defending territory that never existed in the first place. By abandoning this mirage we free ourselves to define our profession in more honest terms. Rather than desperately claiming we provide some ineffable “authentic human touch,” we can focus on the real strategic value we bring: the ability to craft comms that advance organizational objectives while respecting audience intelligence.
Our profession doesn’t need authenticity to justify its existence. Artificial intelligence will likely master “authentic-sounding” communication soon. Human judgment about intentionality, respect, coherence, clarity, and utility will remain valuable far longer (at least until AI masters them too).
In the Age of AI we shouldn’t tilt at “authentic” windmills. Rather, we must direct our energy toward clarifying comms’ purpose and value. That’s the real existential battle—and a fight worth having.
Some definitions of “authority”: One who is invested with the power to command, determine; justification, grounds: “On what [or whose] authority do you make that claim?”
Dissent, for example, exists at every layer of an organization. But that authentic opinion will never make it into an intranet article or Instagram story because it doesn’t support a corporate message or organizational narrative.
…will wince at what we… I’m pleased with the intentional alliteration here, being able to wrangle four W sounds out of five one-syllable words. Sometimes I fancy myself to be somewhat writerly. Working on this phrasing I had in mind a line from William Gass’s masterpiece Omensetter’s Luck (1966), in which he memorably writes, All I lack is a little luck and I’ll lick that lock… Aside the five words beginning with the letter L, you have all and I’ll playing with the double-L sound. Brilliant. It’s so fun to read and say. This has absolutely nothing to do with this essay.
Well damn
Your surgical takedown of our profession was brutal, in the most “chef’s-kiss” way. For all the umbrage it stirred in me, the insights were equally sobering. You said the quiet part out loud for us to hold up a mirror and confront the reflection. Boo – and bravo!