Why did these campaigns work? Because they put normal people first.

'Authenticity' has become the buzz word of all buzz words, but what does it actually mean? And why has it become so important?

What makes a campaign successful depends very much on the context in which it exists. It’s about how you respond to the culture, politics, technology, economics and social atmosphere of the times. So what does that look like as we near the end of 2025, and which brands are responding well?

One of the biggest shifts we can identify over the past few decades has been the transfer of cultural power from the hands of a few to the hands of many. Acquiring fame and authority is easier now than it ever has been, thanks to platforms like TikTok and Instagram, creating a situation where social influence has been democratised across society. Arguably, the first manifestation of this was reality television, which had its heyday in the 2000s and 2010s, catapulting ordinary citizens into stardom for little reason other than their appearance on the show. To be clear, people had been famous for very little reason before reality TV (such as socialites), but it was now happening on an unprecedented scale (and arguably socialites aren’t ordinary).

Next came social media, making this effect even greater. The rise of the term ‘influencer’ (which was only added to the dictionary in 2019) exemplifies this proliferation of cultural power; suddenly, we needed a word that would describe someone who is not an artist, nor a critic, nor a musician, writer, news reporter, nor a politician, but is still a figure of public authority. That’s not to say that influencers aren’t talented in what they do; many are astute marketeers and masters at building a grassroots online presence, but the rise in influencer culture took authority away from those aforementioned figures – the musicians, the writers, the artists and the politicians – and spread it more evenly amongst the people.

But today, even influencers are deemed too elite a group to hold all cultural influence, as power has been distributed further outwards still. We no longer go to a select few for cultural criticism, but seek advice from anonymous users and random strangers on YouTube, Substack, Letterboxd, and more. Music magazines struggle to retain an audience, whilst content creators like Anthony Fantano and Margeaux Labat soar in popularity, and everyone else asserts their opinion on the latest Taylor Swift album via X. “The credibility of traditional reviewers came from expertise, experience, and the imprimatur of trusted publications,” writes Spencer Kornhaber for The Atlantic. “Today, more and more critics pay their own bills, build their own followings, and invent their own rules.”

I scroll through my FYP and see videos of several different influencers in one fell swipe, each one with several thousand followers and a degree of power within their niche sphere of influence. Of course, this is a very different type of fame from the fame David Bowie had in the 80s or Naomi Campbell in the 90s, and that type of fame still very much exists; they’d just have to share it with a lot more people if they were popular now.

The rise of the average Joe has given cultural currency to normalcy. Those who succeed in this world are the most natural on camera, the most ‘authentically’ themselves. TikToker Madeline Argy was popular because she over-shared embarrassing stories of dates gone wrong and intimate medical issues, while Charli XCX’s immense stardom can be explained by her perceived relatability – although I wasn’t falling for it and, arguably, ‘authenticity’ in and of itself has become a performance (but that’s a story for a whole other newsletter).

Where it is understood that most celebrities are putting on an act when they go on talk shows, the point of influencers is that they are famous for being themselves, and so anyone who fails to do so convincingly gets called out for being performative. So, of course, when we found out that influencers were being paid to sell us things in sly (sponsored advertisements), our quest for authenticity intensified and we went lower down the ladder to find it, amongst the everyday vloggers, bloggers and keyboard warriors.

Alongside this dissemination of cultural power also came a transfer of power away from institutions that traditionally held it virtually unconditionally. This is both good and bad. While the BBC has lost relevancy due to its censorship of the genocide in Gaza and politicians are being called out for making up facts, people are taking medical advice from YouTubers before their doctors and scientists are disputed by climate deniers.

This has created an atmosphere of distrust and uncertainty. The people we used to rely on don’t feel the same as they used to. We have entered a post-truth era where misinformation and fake news preside from all directions. And AI only serves to worsen this by blurring the line between fiction and reality even more.

Within this context, authenticity has become even more sacred. Consumers seek out honesty in a world that feels increasingly unreliable. Authenticity has become the buzzword of all buzzwords. This poses a challenge for brands, particularly big ones that are synonymous with these institutions that have lost power. How can brands be authentic when we know they are trying to make money off of us? To make things even harder, Gen Z and now Gen Alpha have grown up in a world surrounded by advertisements, which has made them astute marketeers, keenly aware of when they are being sold to and hypercritical when it does not feel authentic.

So what brands are meeting the criteria?

Spanish clothing brand Paloma Wool has been getting a lot of love for its recent Autumn/Winter 2025 campaign, which pictured head designer and founder Paloma Lanna going about her daily tasks as a mother of two, whilst a model posed nearby in the new collection. As if from two different worlds, these scenes co-existed – high fashion juxtaposing messy, family life – in a very honest portrayal of Lanna’s daily reality, balancing work with home. She wasn’t trying to be anyone else or covering anything up; she was being herself authentically. The key here is that it was not overdone or trying too hard, but touched all the right emotions without seeming performative or heightened. This is her daily reality. And it resonated.

Nike London has also garnered admiration for their recent campaign featuring the PnP callisthenics group, which has significantly more likes than previous posts in the brand’s feed, signalling the desire for more content like this. The impressive drone-shot video shows 60 members of the crew turning the infrastructure of an estate into a sprawling gym, while wearing the new Nike products. “So sick when brands recognise how to tap into communities through “smaller” creators. Only if other brands and agencies understood this is too lol. This is a great campaign 🔥🙌,” says one consumer, reflecting the overall sense in the comments on Instagram that the campaign’s success was down to its engagement with real people, in real spaces. It was not a set. These were not actors. Nike is really putting people on a platform, and therefore reducing the risk of inauthenticity accusations – although some critics were questioning whether it was created using AI, revealing the deep-rooted scepticism brands are at the brunt of, even when they are ticking all the boxes.

The final campaign I would like to point out is Spotify’s ‘Fan Life’, which rolled out across socials, billboards and posters across the globe this summer. The music streaming site recruited genuine music fans to feature in its campaign, showing them in their communities, engaging in specific fan rituals such as Pitbull loyalists wearing the iconic bald cap and a Bad Bunny lover having a slow dance with his grandma. The resulting content evokes genuine on-screen emotion by tapping into scenes that exist and celebrating their niche shared customs in a way that feels accurate to each group. This accuracy ensured authenticity, whilst the portrayal of emotions we can all relate to – the joy of loving an artist – allowed the piece to resonate globally.

Essentially, Spotify, Nike London and Paloma Wool took scenes from real life and portrayed them in a way that felt artistic, but accurate, and showed their product in use. There was no performance because these things really happen, these emotions are really felt, and these people really experience them. This allowed consumers to take down their guard about being sold to and engage in the content without critique. Even if these people don’t actually use the product, it didn’t matter because the work felt authentic.