“Everywhere you turn these days, you hear about authenticity.

They say you’ve got to be real in order to connect with today’s social media savvy audiences and consumers.

But it’s not necessarily true.

Go out and be “real” when you’re having a bad day, and people will quickly call you out for not reacting in the “right” way.

Or, cross a line with your audience that disturbs their expectations of you, and you’ll quickly find that people didn’t want that much of the “real you” after all.

And yet, it’s unavoidable — the world of marketing in general, and specifically online marketing, has heavily gravitated to a greater emphasis on an authentic human voice over canned messages and corporate speak.

So what’s going on with this authenticity stuff?

Glad you asked. Let me give you a bit of an offbeat example involving “authentic” t-shirts on the way to answering you.”

Read the rest here.