‘Authentic’ needs a more useful definition
A current higher-ed marketing critique challenges the sector’s favourite vague word and points toward specificity, evidence, and lived detail.
“Authentic content” is higher ed’s favorite undefined buzzword.
Volt’s September 9 critique argues that authenticity needs to be made concrete rather than used as a blanket approval word.
The Story
Volt’s latest higher-ed marketing coverage takes aim at ‘authentic content’ as an undefined institutional reflex. The critique is timely because many organisations now use the word to describe anything informal, student-led, or lightly polished.
A more useful definition would focus on traceable reality: specific people, meaningful detail, visible process, and claims that can be supported. A phone camera is not a strategy, and looseness is not automatically honesty.
For creative direction, this means moving beyond the request to ‘make it feel real’. Ask whose reality, which moment, what proof, and what the audience should understand or feel differently afterward.
Studio Wensday Angle
Authenticity is not an aesthetic treatment; it is a relationship between claim and evidence.