Disneyland is true to itself and to its originator's vision of “a place for people to find happiness and knowledge?” It may not be a capital-M Magic Kingdom, but it is a small-m magical place. Everything inside it—from the nostalgic architecture to the old-fashioned rides, from the mechanically mannered cast members to the meticulously manicured grounds, from the host of physical cues the company harmonizes to the multifarious impressions guests walk away with—everything within it remains true to self. That is what inspired journalist Tom Carson to write, "From whatever angle, nothing looks fake. Fabricated, yes—fake, no. Disneyland isn't the mimicry of a thing; it's a thing? Architecture professor Charles Moore calls it "the real heart of Southern California" and goes on to say: "What may come as a surprise is how richly Disneyland offers us insight into many layers of reality. People often use Disneyland as a synonym for the facile, shallow and fake. . . It just doesn't wash: this incredibly energetic collection of environmental experiences offers enough lessons for a whole architectural education in all the things that matter—community and reality, private memory and inhabitation, as well as some technical lessons in propinquity and choreography."
Disneyland is, therefore, Fake-real—certainly not what it says it is, but definitely true to itself. Pointing the way for all other businesses that reside in this mode, it covers over its inauthenticity by creating a fake reality. Creating such an offering takes, in poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous phrase, “that willing suspension of disbelief?” People put aside what it actually is—inauthentic—to believe what it says it is. Actually, that is not quite right. In The Matrix and Philosophy, Sarah Worth writes:
When we enter into a fictional world, or let the fictional world enter into our imaginations, we do not "willingly suspend our disbelief" We cannot willingly decide to believe or disbelieve anything, any more than we can willingly believe it is snowing outside if all visual or sensory cues tell us otherwise. When engaging with fiction we do not suspend a critical faculty, but rather exercise a creative faculty. We do not actively suspend disbelief—we actively create belief.
Being Fake-real, then, requires fashioning an offering in whose authenticity your customers willingly desire to believe—you must create belief. Experiences specialize in the Fake-real, whether via fantasy realms such as Disneyland, Dave & Buster's, or Kidzania; virtual worlds such as Second Life or World of Warcraft; themed environments such as The Venetian or Canyon Ranch spas; or any other escape from the real world to other places or times, including movies, plays, and books.
While books provide just such an escape, they are not experiences per se but goods. Commodities similarly may exemplify the Fake-real—the not-actua1ly, pristine wilderness of Yosemite National Park, or so-called Chilean Sea Bass that is really Patagonian Toothfish. There are Fake-real services too, such as personalized customer relationship management (CRM) messages—think of Amazon.com recommendations or Hallmark.com reminders—that do not stem from any real knowledge of you as a person, but provide value through systems that align offerings with what the companies can figure out about your needs. Such transformation offerings as Long Island–based Outward Bound or Muskoka Woods Sports Resort in Ontario create artificial situations—and in the case of places like Equinox Fitness Clubs, artificial environments— in which people can escape from real life to journey down the path of becoming a better person (or team).
Each of these offerings creates value in customers' eyes by shielding the in- authenticity of the environments in which they take place—whether real or fabricated—while simultaneously creating belief in the offering itself and its efficacy. J. R. R. Tolkien, who knew a thing or two about fabricating fictional worlds, called his craft "Enchantment" and outlined how to go about it: "What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful 'sub-creator.' He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': It accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside.
So follow Tolkien in applying these two principles for being Fake-real: (1) never break the circle of belief by pointing out how fake the offering really is, and (2) always maintain the internal self-consistency that allows you to be true to self, lest you be perceived as Fake-fake.
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