Face Value

Hi,

Welcome to the fortnightly newsletter update, focusing on marketing and advertising effectiveness strategies and how to use facial expressions and body language to increase your business or brand engagement and generate more sales.

Key Visual King

Halifax has nailed an excellent example of a genuine smile on the homepage of their website!

The elements of a genuine smile of enjoyment are as follows:

1. Muscles bulge under the eyes.
2. Crow's feet crinkling at the sides of the eyes.
3. The lips turned up, pushing up the cheeks.

Key Visual Kutcha

We're sticking with Halifax, and they've missed the mark with this smile.

This is a mixture of disgust and a smile, so the little girl is not showing a genuine pleasure smile. As I've said before, there are over 10 smiles that are not pure enjoyment but mixes of other emotions.

The top half of the face when coding and analysing faces is the lead emotion... And in this instance, the leading emotion is disgust.

The reason the little girl could be showing the lead emotion of disgust is that she's being asked to hug a model that she doesn't know rather than a family member that she would be more comfortable with.

This is the level you need to dig down to when creating authentic key visuals for your brand or business.

Disgust is shown primarily in simple terms, the wrinkling of the nose. Have a go at wrinkling your nose now, don't hold it for more than 30 seconds though, or you'll start to feel sick.

Face Whisperer Teaches...

There are 5 ways you should be using facial expressions in your marketing... Every business uses “people pictures” in its marketing.

Done well, campaigns that involve images of people can be some of the most engaging out there, after all.

But getting the most appropriate facial expressions for your brand isn’t always as easy as you think. It’s super important though, seeing as you could be using these images all over the shop:

·?????On your website, to reinforce your relevance to your target market.

·?????On your about page, to show who’s behind your brand. This is important!

·?????In your social media, to put the right message across. Using the subtleties and nuances of facial expressions and body language in the very short time you have to communicate before the scroll...

·?????In your advertising imagery, to convey the right emotions to help your consumers make an easy decision to engage and buy.

·?????And on your packaging too!

In each instance, think about the facial expressions of the person in the image.

You see, they give you a unique opportunity to create engagement by targeting the emotion you want your audience to feel when they see the image. (And by the same token, you can accidentally send the wrong message if you don’t think carefully enough about how the picture looks.)

For example, a profile image that shows a genuine smile will come off an awful lot better than a posed smile or a half-smile (which often conveys contempt!). In fact, contempt is the MOST off-putting smile to any audience and can create an automatic distance between the person in the image and the audience.

Guess the emotion

What emotion do you see in the above image? How does it make you feel? What muscle movements do you notice?

Body Language Basics

Proxemics is the study of how humans use space, and in body language terms, reading the space and how it is used sends messages to the viewer.

The messages in the image used by Hermes as their shopfront on Instagram:

• There is a big space between the girl ahead of the other 2 girls. It looks like she's stalked off because the other 2 have upset her...
• The 2 together look like they're on the same side and the other girl is left out.
• The message under the image says "lighthearted and gentle living" - not much lightheartedness or gentility in this image!

If you are putting emotion into the words and messaging you use, you need to embody those emotions in the imagery you're using too.

Round-Up

There are still a few tickets available if you'd like to come along for the day and hear some great speakers and network with women in business in the Midlands on June 8th.

Link to tickets: https://sociallyshared.co.uk/events/#!event/2022/6/8/socially-shared-women-in-business-conference-2022

If you have an event coming up that you'd like me to speak at, just drop me a message.

Let's Talk

Here's my invitation for you to book a chat with me about any campaigns or projects you're embarking on, and let's see if the subtleties and nuances of facial expressions and body language can benefit you! Here's the link: https://letsmeet.io/adriannecarter1/1-to-1-chat

Exciting Stuff

In 2.5 weeks, I'll be launching 'Lie To Me' -The Membership, and there'll be a Founding Members special offer. The focus will be to teach you how to read emotions and body language and to master those skills through implementation techniques to increase your communication skills and read other people.

I hope you find this newsletter interesting and useful! Remember, choosing and using key visuals that will engage your audience is one of the ways you can create more engagement, generate more sales, and shine in your industry. Feel free to share it with any colleagues that might find it interesting too.

Have a great fortnight.

Adrianne

adrianne@thefacewhisperer

+44 (0)7841 637 558