Our Roundup: highlights six brands finding unexpected ways to show up, from Mary Kay’s first major consumer campaign in 60 years to Duolingo’s Fashion Week fashion line and Hyundai’s car-free campaign.

This Week’s Report
—> 5 Ways Brands Confuse Visibility With Authenticity
—> This Week’s Standouts
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—> Top Voices

There is a lot of pressure on brands to be visible right now. More content. More platforms. More partnerships. More impressions. More followers. More ways to show up in front of people. But visibility, on its own, does not create loyalty, trust or authenticity. It can actually make the problem worse. If there isn't something real behind the visibility, you're simply amplifying the brand without giving people a reason to believe in it.

I was reminded of this after reading a recent roundup of 20 ways brands can get visibility wrong. What struck me was how many of them ultimately came back to the same issue: confusing attention with connection. The brands that consistently perform well in the Authenticity 500, including Patagonia, Vans, Ben & Jerry's, Nike and Apple, aren't necessarily authentic because they are visible. They are visible because they have built something recognizable and meaningful that people already connect with. Their products, messaging, partnerships, experiences and communities generally reinforce the same underlying identity.

5 Ways Brands Confuse Visibility With Authenticity

1. Making visibility the goal
More reach does not automatically mean more relevance. Visibility should be a means to communicate something people actually care about, not the objective itself. If the only measure of success is how many people saw you, you're measuring exposure rather than connection.

2. Abandoning authenticity for trends
Red Bull is a good example of the opposite approach. The brand has spent years building visibility around a world that genuinely fits it, from action sports and athletes to events, media and content. It doesn't feel like the brand is attaching itself to whatever happens to be trending that week. The visibility comes from having a clear territory and consistently owning it. That's very different from trying to manufacture relevance.

3. Confusing attention with trust
Trader Joe's doesn't need to be everywhere to maintain a remarkably loyal customer base. Its stores, products, packaging, employees, private-label brands and distinctive personality all contribute to a very recognizable experience. The experience does much of the convincing. You don't have to be constantly reminded why Trader Joe's is different because you've experienced it yourself.

4. Treating visibility as proof
Harley-Davidson takes this a step further. Its brand isn't just communicated by the company. It's demonstrated by the community around it. The people who ride, the events they attend, the groups they form and the culture that has developed around the brand all provide evidence of what Harley-Davidson represents. That's the difference between telling people you have a passionate community and actually having one. Visibility can tell you that a brand is talking. Community can prove that people are listening.

5. Prioritizing reach over value
This may be the easiest trap to fall into. A post can reach 100,000 people and still mean very little to the people who see it. A smaller audience can be far more valuable if the message, product or experience actually matters to them. Attention is easy to measure. Meaning is harder.

The goal isn't for brands to become less visible. It's to make sure the visibility is actually saying something. The strongest brands don't just show up more often. They give people consistent reasons to recognize them, understand them and trust them.

If you can't prove it, you don't have it.

This week’s real-time signals on how brands are actually showing up.

• Mary Kay just launched their largest consumer campaign in company history after 60 years, called Beauty Is More Beautiful Shared.
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• Hyundai just launched a campaign with no cars in it. Not a single one.

• Poshmark just launched their biggest brand campaign during New York Fashion Week. The concept is called Try Yourself On. Not try on clothes. Try on identities.

• Duolingo showed up to Fashion Week with a fashion line. A green purse called “air-mess” for Hermès. A “zhee-vahn-shee” jacket for Givenchy.

• Ben Affleck spent last week spray-painting his name on billboards around Los Angeles. It was the teaser for a new Aflac campaign. Affleck and Aflac.

• SEPHORA just launched on TikTok Shop. Not their full catalog. Something called the Sephora Drop Shop.

What Brands Are Authentic? It is time once again to choose which brands you feel are authentic. Please tell us via our survey (it takes less than 5 minutes to fill out).

The results of your decisions will be part of our annual Authenticity 500 Index rankings, which you will receive for free.

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Disclosure: Some content in this newsletter may be generated with the assistance of AI tools for research and drafting. It was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by our human editorial team before publication.