Authenticity is the currency

Some frog species are poisonous, and they advertise their toxicity with vibrant colors. This has led some other frogs to evolve colors similar to their toxic cousins, but with much lower levels of poison. The coloration is the signal, and in some cases, it's fake.

The peacock's tail, a signal to potential mates, rather than predators, provides a powerful signal of fitness, because it is hard to fake.

Fast forward millions of years, and now a lot of folks in marketing overuse the term "authenticity", like it's some kind of commodity you can fake to increase sales. But authenticity is precious, which is why so many people are trying to fake it. This goes back way before marketing, and way before humans.

As Bob Burg and John David Mann write in their famous book The Go-Giver, that "the greatest gift you can give is yourself".

(They call this the Law of Authenticity, and unlike some of the laws in The Go Giver, which made me think, "yeah, that makes sense", this one took me a while to absorb. After all, who the $^%^ am I? How could I possibly be a great gift? But it's true-- if you are giving something other than yourself, you are giving something less than yourself. For more discussion of this topic, check out my conversation with Bob Burg on Sales for Nerds.)

Now with AI in the mix, a lot of people seem tempted to have the AI pretend to be them. And you get messages like this:

This isn’t some spammer (we all get lots of those messages). This is someone I know (and like and respect). When I responded to this DM, I got a message from Slack saying the recipient has notifications turned off. (Understandable, but why send a bunch of automated DMs?)

Now I hear people talk about wanting AI to send automated follow-up messages after meetings, impersonating them.

Automated messages are great for lots of things– here’s a reminder, here’s a helpful newsletter article, here’s a link to that lead magnet you requested. Feel free to use AI to come up with ideas for emails and provide editing services. Your automated messages can have your voice and personality, but when you use AI to pretend to be you, you break trust.

Don't use AI to pretend to be you.

As trust erodes in general, not just in business emails and DMs, authenticity becomes that much more valuable. Not every business requires this personal touch, but if you’re in a relationship business, yours does. Don’t squander the one precious currency you always have on hand by passing your own counterfeit version.