The Authenticity Hunt

The excellently named Kathryn Blaze Carlson has a piece in today's National Post riffing on today's authenticity seekers:

Regardless of its root, the quest for authenticity has not been lost on marketers, said Robyn Waters, author of The Trendmaster's Guide: Get a Jump on What the Customer Wants Next and a retail-trend consultant who helped transform Target stores into a destination worthy of being called, "Targé."

"The brand is the holy grail these days, and the first thing is that a brand has to be real, authentic," Ms. Waters said. "In this virtual, slick world that we live in, with the PR machine and the celebrity culture, there comes a time when people want to strip back to the essentials. You can trust ‘real', it's about quality."