Not long ago I found myself in a Hermitage, Tenn., supermarket studying a bottle of something called All-Purpose Bourbon-Chicken Grill-n-Dip. At the bottom of the label were the words AUTHENTIC FOOD COURT FLAVOR. 不久前我发现自己身在田纳西一处偏僻寺庙旁在一家超市里，研究一瓶叫做“无所不能的Bourbon-Chicken Grill-n-Dip”的玩意儿。在此物标签底部写着几个字：正宗法院美食风味。
It seemed like a joke at first. A sauce surely can't be authentic if it tastes of a food court and not, say, of your mother's stove. But it wasn't a joke. Promoting products as "authentic" is serious business these days. You will notice the word and its variants being used to sell just about everything—Stoli vodka (whose new ad campaign urges you to "Choose Authenticity"), Kool cigarettes ("Be Authentic"), the now expired presidential campaign of Mike Huckabee (who called himself an "authentic conservative"), the website Highbrowfurniture.com ("Authenticity. Period."), the Claddagh Irish Pub chain (which claims to have an "authentic 'public house' environment," whatever that is) and the state of Maryland, where "even the fun is authentic."
初看这就像一个笑话。果酱如果能尝出法院味道而不是你妈妈的果酱发酵炉发出的味道，那它就不可能是正宗的。但是这可不是笑话。把一种食物推为正宗在今天是件严肃的事情。我们都注意到这个词及其变体被滥用在几乎各种商品的销售中，Stoli伏特加（它的新广告活动引诱你“选择你信赖的”），库尔香烟（真实可信），已经结束的总统竞选人麦克.哈克比（自称是个“可信赖的保守党党员”），网站Highbrowfurniture.com （信任.时代），claddagh爱尔兰酒吧连锁店（它声称提供“正宗客栈环境”，谁知道它搞的到底是什么），在马里兰州，连快乐都被说成是正宗的。
Legendary business consultants James Gilmore and Joseph Pine II have written a book about what all these claims mean. In Authenticity (Harvard Business School Press), they argue that the virtualization of life (friends aren't friends unless you "confirm" them on Facebook; reporters are now all bloggers, and vice versa) has led to a deep consumer yearning for the authentic. America has "toxic levels of inauthenticity," Gilmore and Pine argue: most of the e-mail we get is fake. It's so difficult to reach a real person via an 800 number that we had to invent a heretofore unnecessary locution—real person—to describe the entity we are trying to reach. People live fake lives in Second Life. Corporate deceit reached epidemic levels after the dotcom bust. Depending on your politics, you might add that there were no WMD.
商业咨询界的传奇人物詹姆斯.吉尔摩和约瑟夫.松II曾著书分析过所有这些说法的意义。在Authenticity（哈佛商业学院通讯）中，他们谈到生命的虚拟化（除非他们在facebook相互通过好友认证，否则还不能称作朋友；blogger们都成了公民记者，反之亦然）使得消费者萌生对真实的强烈渴望。美国的真实性已经到了中毒的地步，Gilmore and Pine认为：我们收到的大部分电子邮件都是垃圾。现在，通过拨打800电话号码接通一个真实的人已经变的很困难，以至于我们必须发明一种在以前根本没必要的谈话风格，来接通我们真正要找的实体目标。人们在第2人生过着虚拟的社区生活。网络泡沫时期之后，公司欺骗达到了传染病的水平。你也许会依据自己的政治立场来补充一句：那儿没有大规模杀伤性武器。
Gilmore and Pine run an Aurora, Ohio, consulting firm called Strategic Horizons that has an almost cultlike following in the business world because of their ability to accurately predict consumer sentiments. Nine years ago, in their first book, they argued that businesses had to start selling experiences—not mere products—in order to survive the new economy. The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage made the case that goods and services were being so thoroughly commoditized by Wal-Mart and the Internet that companies would fail unless they could create such diverting shopping experiences that customers would pay more for the same stuff they could buy for less elsewhere. The book helped explain the success of Starbucks, which sold not just coffee but an Italian coffeehouse experience. The Geek Squad was another example: the company thrived by staging computer repair as theater. Its repairmen arrive at your door literally in costume. The Experience Economy became a sensation in business circles.
吉尔摩和松在俄亥俄州开着一家叫作战略视野的新兴咨询公司，它的屁股后面有一群朝拜似的跟随者，它们具有精确预测消费者态度的能力。9年前，在他们的第一本书中，他们认为商业将转向销售体验—不是更多的商品—为了在新经济浪潮中生存。体验经济：工作是剧院和商业是舞台，货物和服务将通过Wal-Mart和互联网实现彻底的商品化，除非公司们能够创造出这样有趣的消费体验，并保持独特，使得顾客愿意烧更多的钱在它们上面，否则结局只有凋零。这本书的内容可以解释星巴克的成功，星巴克不仅仅卖咖啡，最重要的是它让消费者体验到了意大利咖啡屋的情调。发烧友是另一个例子：这个公司通过舞台表演的形式维修电脑实现了公司的蓬勃发展。它的维修工人穿着剧装来到之前确定的地址进行工作。体验经济成为商业界的一项轰动性发现。
Gilmore and Pine write as much about culture as about business, and their new book on authenticity has crystallized the interaction between self and commerce in the current era the way The Experience Economy did for the late 1990s. The aura of inauthenticity around some brands is killing them, Gilmore and Pine say. Just look at Sharper Image and all its shiny gewgaws—or Lillian Vernon, which sells tacky jewelry and fake "Forever-Fresh" daisies. Both companies filed for bankruptcy last month. "What [consumers] buy must reflect who they are and who they aspire to be in relation to how they perceive the world—with lightning-quick judgments of 'real' or 'fake' hanging in the balance," Gilmore and Pine write. 吉尔摩和松在文化方面的著说和其在商业方面的著作一样硕果累累。他们关于真实性的新书就像90年代体验经济做的那一样确定了当今时代自我与商业之间的内部作用。被虚假文化氛围笼罩的品牌正在杀死自己，吉尔摩和松说。看看Sharper Image光鲜的便宜货，或者Lillian Vernon，叫卖俗气的珠宝首饰和冒牌“永远年轻”雏菊，都在上个月经历了破产立案。“消费者买的东西一定能表达出他们是谁，他们渴望和谁建立关系，他们怎样理解这个世界—闪电式的用“真实”和“冒牌”俩个词语来平衡，”Gilmore和Pine写到。
