“Be your authentic self.”
If you have taken any marketing course in the last decade, you’ve seen this line treated like a commandment. It sounds good until you think about it. Step back, study how it’s been applied in real estate, and you’ll notice how authenticity has drifted into something it’s not.
Entertainment dressed up as honesty
Showing up as yourself should not require lighting, multiple cameras, photoshopping, editing, hair, makeup, skits, parodies, or filters. Authenticity should not concern itself with production, personality, or performance.
Unless you work in real estate. Here, authenticity has become styled and manufactured through fabricated personas and influencer-style content created to win business from people making one of the largest financial decisions of their lives.
This happened partly because we treated marketing as personal brand expression instead of a discipline grounded in understanding the marketplace, shaping communication around what people value, and adjusting based on what the data shows.
Marketing is meant to surface what matters to consumers, not busk on social for attention.
What passes as authentic marketing now looks scripted, and people are fatigued by the over-marketing and manufactured brand performance. It is not what they want, need, or value.
That deserves a moment of pause and is why the latest Brandwatch report on the State of Social 2026 is important to read. It highlights the public’s low stamina for over-curation and persona-driven, manufactured content. They are rejecting what feels over-produced for the algorithm rather than created for them.
While some may have found success with this style of content in the past, 2026 doesn’t care about what used to work or about ideas that only a select few managed to hack. I want to focus on what’s more likely to work, given how the audience has moved on, and what real estate marketers must do to keep pace.
Blind spot
I shared this report with our membership last week, with a breakdown of what it reveals. It exposes the exhaustion people have around manufactured performance marketing for product brands, which reflects the same approach our industry continues to promote.
A few findings:
More than half of online conversations about ads are negative. This marks a shift from passive skepticism to active rejection. People no longer tolerate marketing that feels contrived or self-serving.
Mentions of de-influencing have surged. This is not a trend. It is a public pushback against hype, over-curation, and persona-driven content. Consumers are rewarding clarity, value, and honesty through the content they amplify.
Brands now initiate less than 1% of conversations about themselves. Brands are not the storytellers anymore. Consumers are. Their narratives, not yours, shape perception and trust. This is why intentional branding (as opposed to accidental branding) is so critical in helping influence and shape the impressions consumers have about your brand.
What much of this report denotes is the fatigue people have with performative marketing. They aren’t just tired of it. They are pushing back against it.
This is the blind spot.
While consumers push back against persona-driven marketing, real estate will likely continue to rely on it going into 2026, despite the signals the audience is giving and their preference for something different.
… And cut
As alluring as it is to be the star of our own marketing, 2026 calls for smart marketers to move away from being their authentic selves and toward something more mature and better aligned with what the marketplace is asking for.
I will summarize what that is with a new phrase that coaches and lecturers can use going forward.
Usefulness points the camera away from you, focusing on the work and the client who seeks clarity, direction, and expertise, not actors and performers.
Make yourself useful through your understanding of where your audience is and how you can move them forward, and you’ll generate more trust. Generously share what you know that you can tie to your expertise, and you’ll amass value.
By being useful, you will gain what you have been after: relevancy, respect, and referability.
Meet Chance Brown: he runs CB&A in Houston. Here he is being useful. All it takes is his time and knowledge. No need for a stylist, a script, or a wind machine.
Useful is not theater. You don’t need a budget, a staff, or a surplus of creativity. Just a simple delivery as you would to someone you love, a mentor, or a client.
Yup, this is what authenticity was meant to be, had we stayed true to it.
Serve the need, not the feed
Brandwatch’s recommendations for 2026 align with what real estate needs most. Read the report and interpret it through the lens of your business.
The most salient point is this: people will reward value over vibe. All day long.
The consumer has changed. Expectations have changed. Your marketing must therefore change. If your marketing team has been reading the same reports I have, let them lead your efforts. If not, read this report together. Discuss the findings. Strategize and reduce the gap between what your audience is saying and what you are marketing.
A thousand words that communicate value will say more than any photo of you ever could.
Serve the need, not the feed, and business will follow.
