Today, Barry Bonds stands trial simply because he lied. His perjury trial is finally underway. His brand integrity has already suffered. And even his record-breaking baseball was re-branded by a cultural and fashion icon, Marc Ecko.

I had the privilege of seeing Marc Ecko speak at SXSW this year. Undoubtedly a sleeper keynote, this was perhaps one of the best presentations I have ever seen in my burgeoning career. Not because my fashion junkie self finally got a hit of something remotely apparel-based in the digital climate, but because he is an individual that embodies the values he preaches: authenticity, unique voice, fearlessness, action snapped together in a beautiful mess.

Enough of the fangirl bullshit, moving onto the ‘so what’ – here’s what Mr. Ecko had to say with his Formula for AWEthentic Connections.

Lesson One. Unique Voice

‘Great creative types are in fact shamelessly self-referential.’

Not all brands can be ubiquitous, something for everyone. Your brand must have a voice. It must say something in all earnestness – be slightly more selfish and self-serving to best serve its most authentic potential. Not greedy, but self-aware.

Lesson Two. Fearlessness

‘Being fearful arrests you from expressing your true self.’

Take a risk, brands. Move forward in a direction that’s earnest to the brand you want to be, to the feeling you want to evoke in your consumers. Don’t stand still.

Lesson Three. Action

True action is different than talking

You cannot confuse talking and inaction with real action and movement. Brands must learn to put their rhetoric into true momentum in order to fortify their brand presence, unique voice, and embody fearlessness. Take a look at Jay-Z for example.

Lesson Three. Touch + Feel

Really great brands understand emotional touch + feel and do it in a way that they get so hard into your wiring that they make you see themselves in a popstalgic [iconic] way.

A great brand reveals itself in its emotional core with a strong, almost tactile relationship with its consumers.

With all these lessons, brands must both glean from and ebb and flow with what their consumers need and want and what is authentic to the brand’s core values. Brands must believe in the ampersand and believe in connecting pieces to tie a deeper emotional connection with their loyalists. Brands must have a voice and put a stake in the ground for what they believe in. And while you’re at it, do something good and make the “CO2 emissions of what you do every day for the world to be good.”

Marc Ecko has not only launched an apparel brand that is a mainstay in hip hop culture, but he’s created two other causal organizations with the same branded fervor and passion: Artists + Instigators and Unlimited Justice. Where Artists + Instigators seeks to create a start-up incubator educational environment for students in the arts, Unlimited Justice seeks to end corporal punishment in schools through both visceral offline engagements and organic and familiar social media tactics.

The presentation itself left me absolutely stunned and reminded me that as someone who works with brands, that it’s not always easy to be fearless, actionable, palpable, and authentic. That it takes work, but someone’s got to do it. There’s always someone watching and consumers are demanding more and more of their favorite brands.