If you spend any time on LinkedIn, you've probably met Greg at Monzo. He posts about working at the UK bank, about the office microwave, meetings that overrun, and the gap between the ideas his brain produces in the shower and the ones it produces in an ideas meeting.

He's also a fictional character. Monzo's Head of Social has described Greg as "a faceless brand character helping us build our brand universe" — a real strategy, with real sign-off, standing behind a made-up colleague.

Greg at Monzo creates an authentic and personal outlet for Monzo and is part of a genre of communications in which companies speak and act as individuals. Ryanair's TikTok account spends its days making fun of its own legroom; Duolingo's owl staged a scripted death and resurrection; and Wendy's has spent almost 10 years roasting people across its own channels, which have generated recurring news stories in their own right, picked up by outlets from CNBC and Business Insider to the Washington Post.

Every one of these 'chaotic' voices sits atop tone-of-voice documents, approval chains, media training and KPIs. The chaos, in other words, has a Gantt chart.

And their planning paid off. Duolingo's owl helped earn over 500 million video views on TikTok in a single six-month stretch. Wendy's roast persona has coincided with the chain leapfrogging Burger King into third place in the US fast-food market, with 22 consecutive quarters of sales growth. Greg's own handle picked up 10,000 followers in its first week alone, from audiences who banks don’t usually get any traction at all.

That same tone of authenticity has not come so easily to higher and business education.

Universities are complex institutions, often historic, with multiple audiences, layers of approval and reputations built over decades. Their communications must represent faculty, students, alumni and leadership, while remaining accurate, inclusive and institutionally credible.

That often produces language which is polished but impersonal. Schools speak of excellence, impact and transformation in press releases that a journalist would struggle to quote directly, and rarely sound like anyone in particular.

But polished does not have to mean impersonal. The most successful corporate voices are not authentic because they are spontaneous, but because they are recognisable, consistent and willing to step outside the usual institutional script. They feel human, even when that humanity has been carefully designed.

Why does manufactured brand authenticity work?

Because what the good ones are really selling is alignment.

Ryanair can joke about cramped seats because every passenger already knows exactly what they bought. The persona matches the product truth, so the joke lands as honesty rather than spin — Ryanair's own marketing chief describes the voice as consistent for over 35 years: direct, honest about who they are, unafraid to be self-deprecating. Journalists cover it as honest self-awareness rather than spin for the same reason passengers accept the joke: the story checks out. Monzo's chatty informality works because the actual product is a chatty, informal app. Authenticity, it turns out, lives in that match.

Rewind to 2018, when KFC ran out of chicken, and in response rearranged its initials into ‘FCK; beneath a plain, funny and genuinely apologetic message. Its response was picked up by more than 700 news articles worldwide, reaching a combined audience approaching 800 million, far beyond what the paid placement alone could reach. It was a company admitting a real failure, at real cost, with wit as the delivery mechanism rather than the substance. The campaign helped KFC recover from the reputational damage and generate widespread positive attention. It remains one of the most cited examples of brand authenticity in media and PR circles because the humour did not distract from the failure, but made the apology feel more direct, human and credible, and gave journalists a story about honesty rather than a story about failure.

There's a caution built into this, though: audiences audit the gap, and journalists audit it fastest. The warmer and more human your persona, the harsher the judgement when real news contradicts it, and plenty of brands have discovered this when a friendly feed collided with an unfriendly news cycle. A persona is a promise, and audiences remember what was promised.

5 media relations lessons universities and business schools can take from manufactured brand authenticity

Universities do not need to imitate Ryanair or invent a fictional employee. What they need is the same alignment: a voice that sounds recognisable, human and unmistakably like themselves — one a journalist can quote without having to translate it first.

1. Define the institutional personality

Decide how the school should sound before individual posts, press statements or media comments enter the approval process. Is it rigorous, provocative, warm, ambitious or practical? Without a shared answer, every piece of content will default to safe corporate language.

2. Replace generic claims with specific beliefs

Every business school talks about impact, transformation and responsible leadership. Authenticity comes from explaining what the institution believes about education, management and the world of work, particularly when that belief gives a journalist something more specific to quote than a line that could run in any competitor's press release.

3. Use the people who already have a voice

Schools do not need to manufacture personality or a press office mouth piece. They already have professors with strong arguments, deans with clear perspectives, students with real experiences and alumni with credible stories - exactly the sources journalists are already looking for. Build relationships between those people and the reporters who cover higher education, and make their voices visible instead of rewriting them until they all sound institutional.

4. Choose a voice that survives difficult news

The tone used during recruitment campaigns must still work during strikes, redundancies, ranking falls, student criticism or a journalist's call for comment. A friendly institutional voice is only credible when it can also communicate difficult information clearly and honestly.

5. Stop confusing polish with professionalism

Professional communications can still contain humour, opinion, uncertainty and personality. Being careful and on brand is important, but just make sure that media training doesn't remove everything human about how your spokespeople actually sound.

Here's the encouraging bit the whole genre has been building to: brands spent a decade manufacturing what universities keep in stock — people who genuinely know things, saying what they genuinely think. Monzo had to invent its most human voice.

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Author: Alexandre Lopez

Having studied at top institutions including Sciences Po, City University of Hong Kong, Oxford Brookes University, KIMEP University and having completed his Masters at the University of St Andrews, Alex’s insider knowledge means that he genuinely understands the inner workings of universities and higher education institutions. Alex has won awards for his academic writing and is fluent in both English and French, and proficient in Spanish.