Authenticity and Inauthenticity in Practice

This chapter explores multiple case studies demonstrating how brand authenticity and other brand management concepts help to explain and analyse fans, loyal players and audiences’ reactions, protests and fan activism against narrative brands. The cases can be clustered into two themes. The first is the ending of a narrative brand that does not provide sufficient narrative closure, leading to perceptions of brand inauthenticity. Cases that fall under this theme are the two television series How I Met Your Mother and Veronica Mars as well as the previously explored Mass Effect 3 video game and the television series Game of Thrones . The other theme that prompts perceptions of brand inauthenticity is mostly found in video games and concerns missing gameplay features that fans and loyal players expect. Cases that fall under this theme are The Sims 4 , Animal Crossing New Horizons and Dragon Age: The Veilguard video games and also the long-running television series Survivor . The chapter highlights how these two themes are key risk points for narrative brand creators and producers in terms of potentially prompting perceptions of brand inauthenticity and thus the resulting fan activism and protests. Analysing fans, loyal players and audiences via a marketing and brand management lens thus helps better understand their behaviours.