Facial recognition – seemingly a larger part of our lives with each passing day. Airports use it, ID cards factor it in, and even our phones make use of our unique likenesses. However, as it is and always has been, the most important use of facial recognition is that of our own brains.
In a world so instinctually and technologically driven by faces, it should be second nature to most of us by now to hold the face as almost the most important factor that defines someone as who they are. If you're someone who wants to have a strong, lasting impact when marketing your company, brand, or services, a professional, clean, and confident profile picture is a must. Think about the last time you met someone for the first time and shook their hand. What was the first thing you registered about them? The answer will most likely be their face. And the same is true when it comes to your prospective customers.
In fact, this point has been proven time and time again through study after study. Posts on social media with faces in them – no matter the context - attract the most likes. Brands that represent themselves with easily recognizable human mascots stand out from others. It's little more than logic and has been a long-kept, well-maintained rule throughout marketing since its very earliest days, long before technology began to increase just how significant and surprisingly rare a human face is day by day.
The emotional connection of a human seeing another human's face means the broadening of initial understanding between your marketing identity and customer from something displayed upon a machine to the knowledge that there is a real person on the end of the line waiting to help them with their issue or provide them with the product or service they need. And, if you didn't think that people were focused on looks enough, it has been shown that the appearance of a CEO or public officer can have monumental effects on profit even in the case of larger companies with many thousands of employees.
All of these factors may be the exact tipping factor that your potential customers need to make the step to investing trust or money in you or your company, and, if ignored, a pitfall that all too many marketing approaches fall into and never recover from. Missing out on opportunities, ignoring a power source, and not making those important first impressions.
The simple answer? Make the impact you need to be making straight from the beginning, with a strong statement. You. Your brand. Inspiring confidence, inspiring trust, inspiring success.
Your face.
Now that's a lot of changing power in just one photo.