Posted on: Sunday, April 4, 2004

Marketers tap secrets revealed in face

By Dave Beal
Knight Ridder News Service

It used to be "read my lips." Now it's "read my face."

"Facial coding," a process developed by brain researchers to decipher and record the 3,000 or so combinations of facial expressions and the emotions they convey, is winning more attention from market researchers.

One of its leading advocates is Twin Cities entrepreneur Dan Hill. In 2002 he moved from San Diego, Calif., to return to the St. Paul area of Michigan where he grew up. With the move, he brought along Sensory Logic, his 6-year-old company.

Sensory Logic helps clients figure out what their customers want and need, based on consumers' often-subconscious emotional responses to marketing appeals.

Hill does his analysis using videotaped facial coding and computer-enabled biofeedback that captures customers' initial sensory responses — the crucial first few seconds — to ad pitches. Electrodes are attached to one side of their mouths, above their eyebrows and on two fingers.

Hill has attracted a growing list of big-name clients, including Minnetonka, Minn.-based Cargill, which recently called on him to test three TV commercials.

Ann Ness, Cargill's director of advertising, has high praise for his work.

"It's unnerving to be in a meeting with Dan Hill," she jokes. "Everybody thinks he's checking out their reactions."

Hill understands. He said his wife is supportive of his line of work "if I don't read her face too often."

He wrote a book last year, laying out his principal theme: Emotions are far more important than rational choice in determining consumers' buying decisions.

Fast Company magazine has nominated Hill's "Body of Truth" as a candidate for its May book of the month.

Last month, the New York Times picked up on Hill's analysis of the Democratic presidential candidates. Hill studied 23 facial expressions of candidates John Kerry, John Edwards and Howard Dean by watching their debates on television or attending them.

He concluded that Edwards had the most likable "genuine smile," conveying the most optimism, and that he added gravitas by knitting his eyebrows.

Dean consistently displayed anger by tightening his lips or tensely holding his mouth slightly open.

Kerry jettisoned his raised upper lip, a characteristic he frequently displayed before the Iowa primary that suggested contempt and disgust, and began smiling more. Still, only rarely does Kerry light up with a genuine, vs. a social, smile.

Minneapolis-based Target Corp. was Hill's first client. He went to a shopping mall and recruited teens willing to be wired up for biofeedback. Forty of 42 youths agreed to volunteer in exchange for T-shirts.

Hill's tools enable marketers to get past what consumers say. "People in focus groups, either because they want to be polite or appear intelligent, say things that may not reflect their true or honest reactions," said Ness.

Howard Liszt, a retired CEO at the Campbell-Mithun advertising agency in Minneapolis, adds that people often don't respond more candidly because they can't give voice to their innermost feelings.

"Since their responses are often subconscious, they can't be expected to express how messages are affecting them," said Liszt, now at the University of Minnesota's School of Journalism.