Olivia: A recent study found that most people wouldn't care if 74% of the brands they use just vanished tomorrow. Jackson: Seventy-four percent? That's not just indifference; that's a full-blown relationship crisis. It's like being at a party where three-quarters of the people wouldn't even notice if you left. What has gone so wrong? Olivia: Exactly! And that's the question at the very heart of The Post-Truth Business: How to Rebuild Brand Authenticity in a Distrusting World by Sean Pillot de Chenecey. He’s not your typical marketing guru; he's a futures consultant. He wrote this book as a kind of field manual for businesses trying to survive in this new landscape of total distrust. Jackson: A futures consultant... I like that. So he's not just looking at last quarter's sales figures, he's scanning the horizon for what's coming next. Olivia: Precisely. The book was even a finalist for a major Business Book Award, which speaks to its impact. But it's also got some polarizing reviews. Some call it a mission-critical handbook, others find it a bit dense. So today, we're going to distill its most powerful ideas. Jackson: Perfect. Let's cut through the noise. Olivia: And to understand this crisis, we first have to understand the battlefield: the 'post-truth' world itself.

Jackson: Okay, 'post-truth' gets thrown around a lot, usually in a political context. What does it actually mean for brands? Is it just about fake news? Olivia: That’s a great question, because the book argues it's much deeper than that. It's not a new phenomenon that just popped up in the last few years. The author traces the term 'post-truth' back to the 1990s, to a playwright reacting to the Iran-Contra scandal. It was this moment where a political leader basically admitted to lying, but framed it as being for 'emotional reasons,' and the public kind of went along with it. Jackson: Whoa. So the idea is that we, as a society, have been slowly agreeing to value feelings over facts for decades? Olivia: Exactly. It’s the idea that objective facts have become less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. And in the digital age, this has been put on steroids. Which brings us to the most chilling example of this in action: the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Jackson: Right, I remember the headlines, but the details are fuzzy. It was something about Facebook and an election, right? Olivia: It was so much more than that. It was the weaponization of personal data. It started with a seemingly harmless personality quiz app on Facebook called 'thisisyourdigitallife'. Around 270,000 people took it. Jackson: Okay, that doesn't sound too bad. Olivia: Here’s the terrifying part. The app didn't just collect the data of the people who took the quiz. It violated Facebook's terms and also harvested the data of all their friends, without their knowledge or consent. Jackson: Hold on. So because my friend took a silly quiz, some company I've never heard of could get access to my profile, my likes, my information? How is that even legal? Olivia: It wasn't, really. And it resulted in the data of an estimated 87 million people being improperly obtained by Cambridge Analytica. But they didn't just have the data; they knew what to do with it. They used it to build sophisticated psychological profiles. They knew your fears, your hopes, your insecurities, what keeps you up at night. Jackson: That is genuinely terrifying. It's like someone reading your private diary to figure out the perfect way to manipulate you. Olivia: And that's exactly what they did. They used these profiles to target people with hyper-personalized, emotionally charged political ads designed to influence their behavior and, ultimately, the outcome of an election. It wasn't about debating facts; it was about pushing emotional buttons on an industrial scale. Jackson: So this is the 'post-truth business' in action. It's not just about lying; it's about creating a reality so personalized and emotionally manipulative that the truth doesn't even stand a chance. Olivia: You've nailed it. And that single event shattered what little trust people had left in social media platforms and, by extension, in the digital world that brands rely on. It revealed that the systems we use every day could be turned against us. Jackson: It makes that 74% statistic feel less surprising. If you can't trust the platform, how can you trust the brands advertising on it? So if the world is on fire with this level of distrust, how do brands even begin to fight back? Is it even possible to be 'authentic' anymore, or is that just another word they'll try to sell us?

Olivia: That is the billion-dollar question, and it's where the book pivots from the problem to the solution. The author talks about the rise of "Conscious Capitalism," the idea that companies should have a purpose beyond just profit. But this has created a new problem: 'purpose-washing.' Jackson: 'Purpose-washing.' I think I know what that is. It's when a brand slaps a rainbow flag on their logo for a month or runs one ad about saving the planet, but their actual business practices haven't changed at all. Olivia: Precisely. And there is no more spectacular example of this failing than Pepsi's infamous 2017 ad with Kendall Jenner. Jackson: Oh, I remember this. It was a train wreck. Olivia: A beautiful, high-budget train wreck. The ad shows this very generic, multicultural protest. Everything is tense. Then, Kendall Jenner, who was in the middle of a photoshoot, decides to join in. She grabs a can of Pepsi, walks up to a stoic police officer, and hands it to him. He takes a sip, smiles, and the crowd erupts in cheers. Unity is achieved. Jackson: It was so tone-deaf it was almost performance art. They tried to take a very real, very painful cultural conversation about protest and police brutality and solve it with a can of soda. Olivia: They tried to say something about unity without doing any of the hard work. They wanted to borrow the coolness and relevance of a social movement without any of the risk or genuine commitment. The backlash was immediate and brutal because people saw it for what it was: a shallow, cynical attempt to commercialize a genuine struggle. Jackson: It's the ultimate example of inauthenticity. It backfired because it was so obviously a marketing ploy. Olivia: Exactly. Now, let's contrast that with a brand that did the absolute opposite. Let's talk about Patagonia. They are famous for their environmental activism, but they took it to a whole new level with their 'Don't Buy This Jacket' campaign. Jackson: Wait, a company ran an ad telling people not to buy their own product? That sounds like business suicide. Olivia: It sounds insane, right? On Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, they ran a full-page ad in The New York Times. It featured a picture of one of their best-selling fleece jackets with a bold headline: "Don't Buy This Jacket." Jackson: My brain is short-circuiting. Why would they do that? Olivia: The ad copy went on to detail the environmental cost of producing that single jacket—the water used, the carbon emitted, the waste created. It urged people to think twice before buying anything new. It encouraged them to repair their old gear, to recycle, to consume less. It was a direct challenge to the consumerist frenzy of Black Friday. Jackson: Wow. So Pepsi tried to borrow a cultural moment and failed spectacularly, while Patagonia created a cultural moment by being true to its own weird, anti-capitalist soul. What happened to their sales? Olivia: They went up. Significantly. People were so impressed by the brand's honesty and genuine commitment to its values that they flocked to support it. Patagonia didn't just say they cared about the environment; they proved it by taking a real financial risk to make their point. They were 'doing it and being it,' not just 'saying it.' Jackson: That's the difference, isn't it? One was a performance, the other was a conviction. It shows that consumers are smart enough to tell the difference between a brand that's just talking the talk and one that's walking the walk, even if that walk is in a completely unexpected direction. Olivia: And that leads to the book's final, most forward-looking idea: what does a truly trustworthy brand of the future look like? It's not just about good intentions or clever campaigns; it's about building trust into the very architecture of the business itself.

Jackson: Building trust into the architecture... what does that mean? Like, making the company building out of glass so it's transparent? Olivia: (Laughs) Metaphorically, yes! The book lays out what it calls a 'Post-Truth Brand Manifesto.' A key part of this is radical transparency, especially around two things consumers care deeply about: price and provenance. Where did this thing come from, and am I paying a fair price for it? Jackson: Okay, that makes sense. We all want to know we're not getting ripped off and that our stuff isn't made in a sweatshop. But how can a brand actually prove that? Olivia: This is where technology comes in, and specifically, a technology that often gets a bad rap: blockchain. Jackson: Blockchain? I thought that was just for cryptocurrency and digital apes. Olivia: It's so much more. The book explains it beautifully. Think of blockchain as a way to give a physical product a secure, unchangeable digital passport. Imagine a bag of coffee beans. Using blockchain, every step of its journey—from the farmer who grew it, to the co-op that processed it, to the ship that transported it—is recorded in a permanent, verifiable digital ledger. Jackson: So, with my phone, I could scan a QR code on that bag of coffee in the supermarket and see the actual farm it came from in Colombia, maybe even the farmer's name and the price they were paid? Olivia: Exactly that. It's already happening. The book gives examples of this being used for everything from fish to fashion. It completely changes the dynamic. The brand's claims about being 'ethically sourced' are no longer just words in a marketing campaign. They become verifiable facts that you, the consumer, can check for yourself in seconds. Jackson: That's a total game-changer. It takes the power away from the marketing slogans and puts it directly into the hands of the consumer. It's a shift from 'trust me' to 'show me.' Olivia: That's the core of the manifesto. In a post-truth world, you can't just ask for trust anymore. You have to earn it by providing proof. Transparency becomes a feature of the product itself, not just a value listed on a corporate website. Jackson: It feels like it forces an entirely new level of honesty. A brand can't hide its secrets in a complex supply chain if that whole chain is visible on the blockchain. Olivia: And that's the hopeful vision the book leaves us with. The same digital tools that created the 'post-truth' crisis—the rapid spread of information and misinformation—can also be used to build a more accountable and trustworthy world.

Olivia: When you boil it all down, the book's ultimate message is that in an age of fakes, the most powerful and disruptive asset a brand can have is verifiable truth. Trust is no longer just a feeling; it's becoming a feature, something you can literally build into a product with technology like blockchain. Jackson: I love that. It's a fundamental shift from 'trust me' to 'show me.' Brands can't just tell us they're good anymore; they have to prove it, transaction by transaction, with undeniable evidence. It's about building reputation capital not through ads, but through action. Olivia: And it makes you realize that the brands that will thrive in the next decade are the ones that embrace this radical transparency, the ones that are brave enough to open up their processes and prove their promises. Jackson: It really makes you think about the brands in your own life. Which ones are just telling you a good story, and which ones are actually showing you the truth? Olivia: That's a great question for our listeners. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Which brands do you feel truly earn your trust in this crazy post-truth world? Let us know. Jackson: This has been fascinating. A real look under the hood of modern business. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.