Marketing your product or service is all about connection. It is about connecting your business’s products or services with the needs of your current and potential customers. It is about connecting your customer’s practical and emotional components in a way that leads them to you. If your customers engage with you and your digital marketing efforts, it can form a deep connection between them and your brand or business.
Although we tend to think the psychology of connection comes from…psychology, it is really found in marketing’s own backyard. For years, neuromarketing researchers worked to know what underlying processes make consumers feel more connected, attracted to, or engaged with one product and not another.
Neuromarketing and Its Impact on Consumer Behavior
Neuromarketing studies how brain activity influences purchasing decisions. Using tools like EEG and fMRI, marketers can measure emotional responses directly. These insights reveal why consumers might favor one product over another without consciously knowing it.
EEG captures electrical activity at the scalp with millisecond timing but coarse spatial detail. fMRI measures blood-oxygen-level-dependent changes with fine spatial maps but slower signals, so both methods are correlational and should be paired with behavioral testing.
Face Perception Networks in the Brain (FFA, STS, amygdala)
The brain processes faces through specialized networks that marketers can translate into testable creative choices. The fusiform face area supports identity recognition, the superior temporal sulcus tracks gaze and expression dynamics, and the amygdala flags emotional salience.
These systems help explain why direct-gaze portraits can feel more socially present, while expressive faces may boost arousal. Creative variants that shift gaze direction, expression, or head orientation provide practical levers to test without guessing.
Neural correlates do not prove persuasion, so pair these cues with behavior. Pre-register hypotheses, then link creative variants to downstream conversion and profitability, not just attention.
For instance, eye-tracking technology demonstrates which ads capture attention first, providing valuable data on visual engagement. Understanding these reactions can help create more effective ads that resonate on a deeper level.
Key eye-tracking metrics include fixations, which mark where eyes stop, and saccades, which are rapid eye movements between stops. Time to first fixation tracks how quickly attention lands on an element like a face or call-to-action.
People often look where a pictured person appears to look, a reliable effect known as gaze cueing. In ad layouts, an averted gaze can nonverbally point to a product, headline, or call-to-action.
Measure whether this guidance works by tracking time to first fixation and dwell time on the target element. Then confirm impact with click-through rate, add-to-cart, or qualified lead metrics before scaling.
Dwell time captures total time spent on an area, while heatmaps and gaze plots visualize attention paths across creative. These signals guide layout choices, but attention alone does not equal persuasion, so teams should test iteratively before scaling.
In addition to brain imaging, neuromarketing uses biometrics to track changes in heart rate and skin conductance. These indicators provide insights into emotional arousal and engagement levels. A spike in heart rate when viewing an ad, for example, might indicate excitement or stress.
Pupil dilation can index arousal, but it is highly sensitive to lighting and screen brightness. Standardize conditions and avoid bright transitions so changes reflect content, not environment.
Facial EMG at the zygomaticus and corrugator sites can track positive and negative affect. Reduce motion artifacts, sync with stimuli timestamps, and validate patterns against recall or conversion lift.
This information allows marketers to refine their strategies to maximize positive emotional responses and minimize negative ones, tailoring campaigns more specifically to consumer preferences.
Through time, researchers and psychologists in the field of personality took what had been discovered from the marketing sector and merged it with processes that join the study of the mind and emotions. According to the work of Judith Glaser, a Harvard University organizational psychologist and anthropologist, those are the areas that shape what we know today as the “psychology of deep connection.”
Glaser has said, in many of her books and interviews, is that “we all have an internal voice that quickly tells us if something or someone may be significant to us” and that often starts with the human face.
Knowing this, how smart is it to use that psychology of connection in your digital marketing efforts? Let’s walk through it, so you can tie this information on your goals, objectives and strategies together with knowledge of your target audience and make a smart decision.
The Role of Emotional Branding in Digital Marketing
Emotional branding bridges the gap between consumer and product by creating an emotional pull. Brands like Apple and Coca-Cola have leveraged this approach successfully, creating memorable experiences. Emotional connections drive customers to prefer these brands, often due to personal stories or shared values conveyed through their marketing.
Building these bonds is linked directly to increased customer loyalty and longer-lasting relationships. Emotional branding not only fosters loyalty but also influences brand perception during economic downturns. Brands that have effectively built emotional connections often face less customer attrition when budgets tighten.
Repeated exposure tends to increase liking and perceived fluency, a pattern documented across media. The effect supports steady, coherent brand assets and faces that reappear enough to feel familiar.
Wear-out still happens, so plan frequency and rotation to protect performance. Refresh backgrounds, headlines, or expressions while maintaining recognizable brand cues that anchor memory.
By nurturing these bonds, brands create advocates who continue to support them. Storytelling and emotional messaging are used to maintain consumer interest even in challenging times. This approach is important for sustaining market share and profitability in a competitive landscape.
How to Test Creatives With and Without Faces
Set up A/B or multivariate tests that randomize audiences and hold budgets, placements, and flight dates constant. Define primary metrics like click-through rate, conversion rate, and cost per acquisition, with secondary metrics like scroll depth and view-through conversions.
Run tests to statistical significance with adequate sample sizes, using power calculators or platform guidance to avoid early stops. Pre-register a simple hypothesis, such as direct-gaze face versus product-only image, and commit to a decision rule.
Define a minimum detectable effect that is meaningful for your economics, then power tests to at least 80 percent. Fix a sample size or use a prespecified sequential method to avoid peeking bias.
When testing many variants, control false discoveries so lucky winners do not fool you. Apply procedures like Benjamini, Hochberg for false discovery rate control, or Bonferroni if variants are few.
Rotate creatives evenly to reduce platform learning bias, and apply frequency caps to keep any single image from exhausting audiences. Segment results by device, placement, and key audience traits to spot consistent winners rather than one-off spikes.
Use holdout groups or geo-split tests when possible to measure true lift beyond platform reporting. Validate findings in a second market or segment before broad rollout to limit costly false positives.
Matched-market tests compare regions with similar pre-period trends, then measure lift when one group sees a face-forward strategy. Keep budgets and timing synchronized, and confirm balance before launch.
Synthetic control methods can build a weighted comparison from multiple markets when perfect matches are scarce. Run stability checks, then replicate in a second period or region to confirm durability.
For building materials brands with long sales cycles, track assisted conversions, qualified lead rate, and pipeline value alongside top-funnel clicks. Sync ad data with your CRM using UTM parameters so sales feedback informs which face or layout actually moves specifiers and contractors.
Document learnings in a testing log that records creatives, audiences, and outcomes, then recycle winners into new variants. Measure not only response volume but profitability and lead quality, so results reflect real business impact.
Reasons to Market With a Human Face
There are many things that a human face can bring to a business’s marketing strategy, including presenting an identifiable brand with whom people can connect.
1. A sense of identity
One of the things a human face brings is a sense of identity, especially if that face has character (or is a character). A face suggests humanity behind it. Faces have been shown to be more recognizable than names or even company logos.
In a recent study, researchers found neurons in the human visual cortex that selectively respond to faces. According to Science Daily, the researchers showed “neurons in the visual cortex responded much more strongly to faces than to city landscapes or objects. The results provide unique insights into human brain functioning at the cellular level during face processing.”
2. Faces are memorable—more so than words or objects
Researchers at Cedars-Sinai recently reported on how the area of the brain responsible for memory is triggered when the eyes come to rest on a face versus another object or image. Their findings, published in Science Advances, add to scientific understanding of how memory works.
According to the research reported by Cedars-Sinai, investigators found that when the eyes land on a face, certain cells in the amygdala, a part of the brain that processes social information, react and trigger memory-making activity.
“You could easily argue that faces are one of the most important objects we look at,” said Ueli Rutishauser, PhD, director of the Center for Neural Science and Medicine at Cedars-Sinai and senior author of the study. “We make a lot of highly significant decisions based on looking at faces, including whether we trust somebody, whether the other person is happy or angry, or whether we have seen this person before.”
Ok, so faces are a win. Should they be caricatures or cartoons, or real human faces? Advocates of using cartoon characters in marketing exist, as cartoon characters’ memorability can be significant.
Even though past research has shown consumers tend to remember animations and caricatures, be sure to consider the impression given off by a specific face.
It wasn’t that long ago that many companies reconsidered how the faces of black characters were representing their brand. In the forefront of the face change was Quaker Oats Company parent company PepsiCo with Aunt Jemima brand (now the Pearl Milling Company name and logo) and Mars Incorporated with Uncle Ben’s Rice, which was renamed Ben’s Original. Both companies admitted the “face” of their brands was rooted in a racial stereotype.
3. Faces can create emotion
If you’re in the camp of people who believe universal emotions are delivered via facial expression, you are in good company. If you’re with those who believe facial movements during emotions vary too widely to be universal beacons of emotional meaning, you’re in good company.
“Some experts maintain that people around the world make specific, recognizable faces that express certain emotions, such as smiling in happiness, scowling in anger and gasping with widened eyes in fear,” according to a recent Scientific American article. “They point to hundreds of studies that appear to demonstrate that smiles, frowns, and so on are universal facial expressions of emotion.”
But those in other camps argue that “alleged universal expressions just represent cultural stereotypes.” According to the Scientific American article, both sides in the debate recognize that facial movements vary for given emotions (faces do show emotion!), but disagree on whether there is enough uniformity to detect what people feel across the board.
4. Gaze direction can guide attention
Faces can act like signposts when eyes point to a product shot, benefit line, or call-to-action. Direct gaze boosts social presence, but an averted gaze can guide viewers across a layout more efficiently.
Set up a simple test that pairs the same model and background with only gaze direction changed. Judge success on target interactions and qualified lead rate, not only heatmaps or time on image.
Current Trends in Image-Based Marketing
Image-based marketing today is dominated by authenticity and relatability. Consumers favor brands that use real photos, taken by actual users, over polished advertisements. This trend boosts trust and perceived honesty.
Influencer marketing thrives on this trend, with influencers showcasing products in real-life settings. Combining user-generated content with strategic marketing can lead to stronger brand equity and consumer trust.
Accessibility for Image-Based Marketing
WCAG 2.1 calls for text alternatives for non-text content, so write alt text that conveys the image’s purpose. Describe the information that matters to the message, not every visual detail that does not aid comprehension.
WCAG 2.2 is now the current W3C Recommendation, so use it as your reference for conformance. Keep alt text purpose driven, describing the action or information the face conveys in the context of the page.
Avoid guessing at sensitive traits like age, race, or health status in alt text. Use captions for nuance, and keep important copy as HTML so it is readable by assistive tech and search engines.
Use captions when context adds meaning or clarifies the action you want the viewer to take. Avoid baking important copy into images, and provide HTML text so screen readers and search engines can parse it.
Maintain sufficient color contrast for any text over imagery so specs remain legible on mobile in bright light. Mark decorative images with empty alt attributes so assistive tech can skip them and reduce noise.
Accessible imagery improves usability and can help SEO by reinforcing topical relevance with clear text alternatives. In B2B building materials, it also supports specifiers and field crews who rely on clear, scannable visuals.
When A Face Might Be the Wrong Approach
1. That face is everywhere (aka overused stock photos)
While faces can be effective in marketing, how they are used is important. For businesses embarking on their digital marketing strategy, stock images are often used which can pose a problem at times. Some images are so widely circulated that the same “smiling 40-something mom” that goes to your dentist in Phoenix might also visit your aunt’s chiropractor in Philadelphia.
Ubiquitous images of the same—or even similar—faces can make your business seem more fabricated and less trustworthy or authentic.
2. Cute and sexy don’t always work
The attractiveness of the subject might create a stumbling block, too. Using an adorable baby or animal to draw potential customers into your ad might get their initial attention, but will it lead them to engage with your products? On average, digital content shown on mobile devices is given less than two seconds of attention.
An attractive baby often will take up most of the attention, unless a clear connection with the product is established quickly, such as with the Gerber baby. (To that, we offer a fun lesson on the weird history of babies in advertising.) It’s the same for sex. You hear that sex sells. And you hear that sex sells again. But unless that sexy person is relevant to your products (swimsuits, maybe?) you have just wasted everyone’s time and eyeballs, including your own.
3. Humans are judge-y creatures
The judgmental nature of humans is also a reason using a face in your digital marketing might let you down. Regardless of how hard some may try to embrace inclusiveness, people have always judged each other for a variety of reasons. Think about who your target audience is (which you should be doing all the time anyway!) and how your audience might interpret the faces in your digital marketing campaign.
Whatever your strategy, connection is the goal, not alienation. Choosing the face that says what you as a company want to say and still says what your customers want to hear can be a tough call. and some businesses opt for less controversial options, such as landscapes, product photos, or more neutral illustrations.
4.Images alone rarely convey all the information
Adobe, in its blog “About Face: Why You Should Stop Showing Faces in Your Ads,” suggests you should knock it off with all the faces. (But does offer alternatives.)
Among the reasons cited are the judgmental nature of humans, but the blog author also drew from years of ad testing experience, writing, “I discovered that ads with people almost always depressed reader or viewer response. Without fail, ads with no photography or a more neutral environmental use of photography outperformed ones that relied primarily on human faces.”
5. Licensing and model releases are mandatory
Commercial use of an identifiable person typically requires a model release and the correct image license. Check whether your stock asset is royalty-free or rights-managed, and confirm that a model release is on file.
Rights of publicity are governed by state law, so release language should match key jurisdictions. California Civil Code section 3344 addresses commercial use of likeness, and New York law provides statutory rights including certain post-mortem protections.
Ensure releases specify advertising use, media, territory, and duration, plus compensation terms. Keep signed copies on file and map coverage to every planned channel and market.
Editorial-use-only photos are not suitable for ads, landing pages, or sales collateral. Social media images need written permission from the rights holder, and marketers should retain documentation in a central archive.
Embed IPTC photo metadata fields like Licensor and Web Statement of Rights so rights travel with files. Add structured data or a clear license link so platforms can display licensing information.
These steps reduce takedown risk and speed asset reviews across teams and partners. They also help search platforms properly attribute images, which supports compliant reuse.
Is using a face worth it for your digital marketing efforts? As with so many things in marketing, you must know your audience, your marketing and business goals and have a plan. If that plan has a face, you may do well. If you do use a face, remember that the words behind it matter, too. Make sure that there is a personality and quality product behind that face that customers can embrace and support. Even (and especially) when the face you choose to use is your own.
Ethical Considerations in Using Faces in Marketing
Ethical use of faces in marketing involves respecting privacy and representation. Companies must ensure that the faces they use reflect a broad and inclusive reality. Brands facing backlash for using stereotypical images emphasize the importance of this practice.
Children’s privacy and advertising with faces
Featuring minors introduces extra duties across regions, beginning with verifiable parental consent in the United States under COPPA for data collection from children under 13. The UK Age Appropriate Design Code sets expectations for default privacy and data minimization for users under 18.
In the European Union, the Digital Services Act restricts targeted ads to minors based on profiling when platforms know a user is a minor. Treat any face data from minors with heightened care, and document consent and retention rules before publishing.
Under GDPR, facial images are personal data, and processing biometric data to uniquely identify a person requires a lawful basis and a qualifying condition such as explicit consent. Using a photo in advertising does not itself create biometric data unless you generate or use face templates for identification.
In the United States, the CCPA and CPRA grant California residents access, deletion, correction, and opt-out rights for sale or sharing of personal information. If you collect faceprints or similar identifiers, laws like Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act require notice, written consent, and a published retention schedule.
Texas requires notice and consent for capture or use of biometric identifiers under its CUBI statute. Washington State’s law on biometric identifiers also addresses collection and use with consent and security requirements.
A standard photograph is not biometric processing unless used for identification or recognition workflows. If you deploy face templates or recognition, publish a retention schedule and obtain written consent where required.
Ethical guidelines suggest obtaining full consent from individuals featured in ads and nurturing an inclusive approach that avoids reinforcing harmful stereotypes.
Create internal rules for AI-generated or heavily edited faces so ads do not misrepresent real people or product results. The FTC bars deceptive advertising, so disclosures and truthful claims remain your baseline.
FTC Endorsement Guides: disclosures for visual endorsements
The FTC Endorsement Guides require that endorsements be truthful, typical for expected results, and not misleading. Any material connection between the endorser and the brand must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously.
Disclosures should be hard to miss and easy to understand across formats, including short videos and social posts. Train creators and internal teams on placement and wording, then audit live ads for compliance.
Adopt media provenance standards such as C2PA and Adobe Content Credentials to signal when imagery is AI-generated or modified. Keep an approvals log for synthetic assets and their disclosures so reviewers and partners can verify provenance.
EU AI Act transparency for synthetic or manipulated faces
The EU AI Act introduces transparency duties for AI-generated or manipulated imagery, including deepfakes. When synthetic faces appear in ads, label them so viewers are informed, and keep records that show how assets were created.
Pair disclosures with provenance tools so partners can verify asset history. This combination supports legal compliance and builds audience trust across markets.
Under GDPR, facial images are personal data, and processing biometric data to uniquely identify a person requires a lawful basis and a qualifying condition such as explicit consent. Using a photo in advertising does not itself create biometric data unless you generate or use face templates for identification.
In the United States, the CCPA and CPRA grant California residents access, deletion, correction, and opt-out rights for sale or sharing of personal information. If you collect faceprints or similar identifiers, laws like Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act require notice, written consent, and a published retention schedule.
Ethical guidelines suggest obtaining full consent from individuals featured in ads and nurturing an inclusive approach that avoids reinforcing harmful stereotypes.
Create internal rules for AI-generated or heavily edited faces so ads do not misrepresent real people or product results. The FTC bars deceptive advertising, so disclosures and truthful claims remain your baseline.
Adopt media provenance standards such as C2PA and Adobe Content Credentials to signal when imagery is AI-generated or modified. Keep an approvals log for synthetic assets and their disclosures so reviewers and partners can verify provenance.
Adopt media provenance standards such as C2PA and Adobe Content Credentials to signal when imagery is AI-generated or modified. Keep an approvals log for synthetic assets and their disclosures so reviewers and partners can verify provenance.
The Effectiveness of AI-Driven Personalization in Marketing
AI technology allows marketers to create personalized experiences by analyzing consumer data. This personalization can tailor content, including which faces appear in marketing campaigns.
AI assesses consumer preferences, optimizing the selection to enhance engagement and conversion rates. Brands using AI personalization can offer marketing that aligns closely with individual consumer needs, providing an advantage in digital spaces.
Avoid targeting or optimizing on sensitive attributes or their proxies, and respect consent signals and opt-outs. Collect only what you need, define retention windows, and document how face-related features influence delivery or ranking.
In the European Union, honor user choices through IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework version 2.2. Capture and pass consent strings across your ad tech stack, then restrict processing when users opt out.
Map purposes and vendors, and set retention windows consistent with disclosures. Run periodic checks to confirm that downstream partners respect user preferences across placements.
Monitor performance across segments to catch disparate impact, then retrain or adjust when patterns emerge. Vet third-party tools for training data sources, bias testing, and documentation, and set frequency caps to limit fatigue.
FAQs
Connection is vital in marketing because it helps customers relate to and engage with your brand, forming a deep connection between them and your business.
A human face brings a sense of identity, improves memorability, and can create emotional connections with customers.
Both can be effective, but consider the impression and authenticity conveyed by a specific face to align with your brand values.
There is debate on this topic, with some experts claiming universal facial expressions, while others argue for cultural variations in emotional expressions.
Overused stock photos, distracting cuteness or sexiness without relevance, and potential misinterpretation by the audience are factors to consider.
Adobe suggests that ads with more neutral photography or alternative visuals often outperform those relying solely on human faces.
It depends on your audience, goals, and strategy. If used thoughtfully and backed by a quality product, a face can enhance connection with customers.
Landscape images, product photos, or neutral illustrations are alternative choices that may convey information effectively.
The words behind the face should reflect a compelling personality and quality product, enhancing the overall brand image customers can embrace and support.
