Flowers & Pearls: Curated Reality
In her column, Sarah Pally explores the fine line between reality and staging in advertising. This time, she explores why authenticity is considered the ultimate goal in advertising—and reflects on the art of embellishing reality just enough to keep it believable.
The warm, (supposedly somehow) healing water, the bubbling massage, the lightness of being… with your eyes closed, you enjoy your time at the thermal spa. Or do you perhaps close your eyes to escape the flabby, hairy, moldy reality? Because it’s not at all like it is in the brochure.
Reality is obviously rarely suitable for advertising. The sweet spot between aesthetics and emotional appeal often lies in a kind of curated reality: what’s shown isn’t real, but it’s real enough. It isn’t false, either, but it’s false enough. It’s that much-vaunted authenticity. Ordering the coarse, greasy pork belly with spicy sauce at an Asian restaurant and bravely trying to eat it all with chopsticks feels authentic. What would be “real,” however, is devouring a mountain of chicken feet with relish—by hand and with a sauce—in a faceless megacity amid the exhaust fumes of mopeds, after which most people would spend the rest of the evening in the emergency room.
Tiki Soda and Sunstroke
Speaking of moped exhaust pipes: A «consumer-oriented» retailer is currently playing this game between authenticity and its optimized version to great effect. On the posters, kids are still allowed to walk the dog themselves, rosy-cheeked female soccer players cheer together at the neighborhood tournament, and the village youth knock back a few Tiki beers on the bench behind the playground. Of course, they don’t mention that the dog’s breath stinks to high heaven, that everyone threw up at the pickup game because of heatstroke, and that the village kids are actually puffing on «cigarettes.» This idyllic, nostalgic rural vibe is brought to life using today’s authenticity codes: wild, slightly overexposed images in a candid, off-the-cuff snapshot style, paired with a casually tossed-off, simple headline. It’s as if the little sister had done it, not the expensive agency. Why does it work? Because it’s just credible enough not to be off-putting.
In a thermal spa, however, authenticity has no place, because things can quickly get a bit unpleasant there. That’s why utterly uninteresting, run-of-the-mill models strike stiff poses while projecting absolute relaxation in a deserted facility—completely free of potbellies and chicken feet. Admittedly, this is neither real nor authentic, and certainly doesn’t qualify for the advertising “sweet spot.” But sometimes you just have to turn a blind eye.
Analyzed since 2025 Sarah Pally In her column "Blossoms and Pearls", she uses industry-related terms and comments on them with a personal touch, from a linguistic perspective - as well as with a precise view of developments in the industry. Pally is a partner in the Partner & Partner agency in Winterthur. She has been working in the fields of content marketing, text/concept and storytelling in the communications and marketing sector for 15 years.
