The Authenticity of the Narrative Brand

This chapter explores the concepts of brand authenticity and brand inauthenticity in more detail and applies them to the cases of the Mass Effect 3 video game and Game of Thrones television series to demonstrate their usefulness in understanding fans, loyal players and audiences’ reactions to narrative brands. The three types of brand authenticity, historical, values and categorical, with categorical appearing the most useful, are introduced and explained. The three causes for a perception of inauthenticity are deception, ulterior motives and adulteration, and how they cause a brand transgression is also explored. Because fans, loyal players and audiences are engaged and emotionally attached, they are careful and attentive, thus allowing them to analyse prior narrative brand content to determine if new instalments and developers are authentic, match with what came before and meet their expectations. If the narrative brand does not match what came before, it can be perceived as inauthentic, resulting in fan activism and protest behaviours aimed at brand value deconstruction.