Twenty-five productive years have passed since the late Barbara Stern called for marketing scholars to take the topic of brand authenticity into consideration. Brand authenticity is now believed to be a core asset in mainstream marketing, yet confusion surrounds the nature and usage of the term. Using the Antecedents, Decisions and Outcomes format initially developed by Justin Paul and Gabriel Benito as an organizing framework, this article seeks to consolidate an area of thought characterized by multiplicity and excess of disparate meanings. Based on the extensive coverage of studies published over a period of 25 years between 1994 and 2019, extant literature on brand authenticity is reviewed. Three primary streams of research are identified: (1) characteristics that distinguish the ‘real thing’ from the fake, (2) the legitimizing function of authenticity and (3) emotional and moral aspects of authentication. Despite substantive contributions over the last 25 years, many areas of brand authenticity remain underexplored. By synthesizing extant literature, the aim of this study is to identify gaps in knowledge about brand authenticity and to prepare for a future research agenda guided by intersectionality.

Purpose

Authenticity has emerged as a prevailing purchase criterion that seems to include both real and stylised versions of the truth. The purpose of this paper is to address the negotiation of authenticity by examining the means by which costume designers draw on cues such as historical correctness and imagination to authenticate re-enactments of historical epochs in cinematic artwork.

Design/methodology/approach

To understand and analyse how different epochs were re-enacted required interviewing costume designers who have brought reimagined epochs into being. The questions were aimed towards acknowledging the socio-cultural circulation of images that practitioners draw from in order to project authenticity. This study was conducted during a seven-week internship at a costume store called Independent Costume in Stockholm as part of a doctoral course in cultural production.

Findings

Authenticity could be found in citations that neither had nor resembled something with an indexical link to the original referent as long as the audience could make a connection to the historical epoch sought to re-enact. As such, it would seem that imagination and historical correctness interplay in impressions of authenticity. Findings suggest that performances of authentication are influenced by socially instituted discursive practices (i.e. jargons) and collective imagination.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to the literature on social and performative aspects of authentication as well as its implications for brands in the arts and culture sector

Purpose: The twofold aim of this theory-building article is to raise questions about the ability of queer cinema to transform market culture and ideologies around gender and sexuality. First, the authors examine how the very capitalization of queer signifiers may compromise the dominant order from within. Second, the authors address how brands possibly can draw on these signifiers to project authenticity.

Design/methodology/approach: Through visual methods of film criticism and the semiotic analysis of three films (Moonlight, Call Me By Your Name and Portrait of a Lady on Fire), the authors outline some profound narrative tensions addressed by movie makers seeking to give an authentic voice to queer lives.

Findings: Brands can tap into these narrative attempts at “seeing the invisible” to signify authenticity. False sublation, i.e. the “catch-22” of commodifying the queer imaginaries one seeks to represent, follows from a Marcusean analysis.

Practical implications: In more practical terms, “seeing the invisible” is proposed as a cultural branding technique. To be felicitous, one has to circumvent three narrative traditions: pathologization, rationalization and trivialization.

Originality/value: In contrast to Marcuse's pessimist view emphasizing its affirmative aspects, the authors conclude that such commodification in the long term may have transformative effects on the dominant ideology. This is because even if something is banished to the realm of imagination, e.g. through aesthetic semblance, it can still be enacted in real life.