Episode 390: Pros and Cons of Faceless Marketing
In this episode, Fiona talks about the pros and cons of faceless marketing. She also provides insights into how faceless marketing can impact brand connection and longevity.
You'll Learn How To:
What is faceless marketing
Considerations for businesses contemplating faceless marketing
Importance of humanizing the brand and fostering connection
Trends in marketing and the emergence of faceless marketing
Discussion on privacy concerns and brand longevity
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode
I talk a lot about humanizing your brand and making sure that you are driving community and connection through your brand because that is what ultimately is going to set you apart and make somebody feel like, you know what they might be a bit more expensive or they might be a bit further afield for me to get to, but I love what they're doing and I love the people behind that brand. And by not having a face, it can make people a little bit maybe less inclined to feel like a genuine connection to that person. It's like if you go into a store and somebody's talking to you from the counter, but they're not looking at you or they're looking down or maybe you're just having a conversation with somebody and they are not looking at you and they're looking around, looking behind you. There's this disassociation and like this detachment from that connection that you potentially could build.
Welcome to episode 390 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today is a coaching episode and if you ever look at changes and trends in marketing and think, “Should we be doing that?” Then this is an episode for you. Speaking of marketing, the Marketing for Your Small Business course and coaching program kicks off very soon in March. We always have the marketing for your small business course available. You can do that anytime you like twice a year. We do offer a coaching component to that. What that means is you can go through the course module by module and each week for nine weeks you come to a live coaching session about the module that you've just gone through in that week prior. For example, you might do module two, and then you'll come to the coaching session for that module.
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If you are spending any time on social media, you may well have heard of a trend that has been around for some time called faceless marketing. Faceless marketing, it's funny these things because I've been in marketing for 23 years this year, so well before social media was even the thing, I have seen so many older things packaged up as somehow new and different and modern when they have been around for some time. Faceless marketing is one of those faceless marketing, this idea that marketing campaigns or marketing your business can happen without your face having to be on the screen, which can deter a lot of people. I have to say from getting on and getting out there and putting themselves out there, that idea that that's something new, it has been around for many years where brands and particularly bigger brands, if you think like TV ads, they weren't always using people's faces.
We had animals and mascots and other things being created, slogans and cartoon figures and all sorts of things. It's not like, this has never happened before. But I think what we've seen a lot more recently, I would say in the last two plus years is a bunch of people starting or resurrecting social media accounts and purposefully, intentionally not showing a face. They may show their body, they may show elements of their hands, their legs, and their feet, but there is no face being shown. For a lot of people that is attractive because it's like, I don't have to put makeup on, I don't have to do my hair, or whatever silly things that we can worry about.
For a lot of people, it's seen as this easy way to create a whole bunch of content and get it out there and remain anonymous as well. I think some of the desirability and attraction to it is probably also to do with just this massive saturation of content creators and where every single person is becoming almost like a mini-celebrity in their own right. I think there's been a bit of a backlash to like the face-to-camera constantly, what do you call like the talking head where you go to, for example, especially on TikTok, you go and you see somebody's account and every single video is just their head talking to you and the whole like, “Hi guys, it's me.” I think TikTok is changing the way that people market in a lot of ways, but you see this massive rise of faceless marketing across social media in particular Instagram and TikTok.
There is this appeal, there is an appeal that like, I could just do that too. Added to this, you see a lot of MLM multi-level marketing people out there. You can hear the sigh in my voice or people who have absolutely zero experience in marketing using faceless marketing to sell certain products. Not all of them, I'm not saying that at all. But what I've seen is a whole bunch of people promoting the idea that faceless marketing allows you to just build a big audience quickly and then you can sell them a $7 course that you don't even know anything about, that you've just bought from somebody re-skin in your brand colours and now you're selling it. To me that massively lacks integrity and is somebody who's worked in marketing for 23 years.
It frustrates me that there are people out there who are selling marketing courses that have never written that course or never pulled that together. Anyway, I digress. What I'm trying to say is I want to go through the pros and the cons of faceless marketing because if it's something that you're considering. I'm not saying that it's completely wrong in any measure, I think that it can be super attractive to people and there is this huge like, imagine that. Imagine I can make all these videos without having to show my face. Awesome. But you also want to consider the cons of that. So there are as many pros as there are cons. Again, I'm not saying, don't do it. And I was having many conversations with clients, one in particular recently where I was like, “This might be something that you want to try.”
I'm not against it, but I think it's important to consider the pros and cons of this. Let's go through it, should we go through the pros or cons first? Do we want to end negative or positive? Maybe let's end positive. Let's do the cons first. The things that you want to think about if you're considering faceless marketing that may work against you and your business and your brand goals is firstly the lack of personal connection. I talk a lot about humanizing your brand and making sure that you are driving community and connection through your brand because that is what ultimately is going to set you apart and make somebody feel like you know what, they might be a bit more expensive or they might be a bit further afield for me to get to, but I love what they're doing and I love the people behind that brand.
And by not having a face, can make people a little bit maybe less inclined to feel a genuine connection to that person. It's like if you go into a store and somebody's talking to you from the counter but they're not looking at you or they're looking down or maybe you're just having a conversation with somebody and they are not looking at you and they're looking around, looking behind you, there's this disassociation and like this detachment from that connection that you potentially could build. If you do not have your face on a video and you're doing a lot of video content, for example in social media or even static images without any faces at all and without establishing who is behind the brand, then it can cause a lack of this personal connection.
I'd say that's the first one because people don't know who's behind the brand and in some cases, this can work well with like the whole mystery and everything else. But I also think in a lot of cases, if you want long-term connection, then choosing not to have your face anywhere or any of the faces of the people who work for you can lead to this lack of connection. The second one is the idea that people are less able to potentially recognize your brand. Brand recognition is a huge part of brand loyalty and people coming back to your brand and coming back to your business over time. And we see this all the time. I'm okay with names I would say, but I'm not the best. Like in terms of let's say for example an actress that I might like that's been in lots of shows.
Let’s say, for example, I'm going to think of one right now. My husband and I liked the show Ozark and there was a woman in there, I dunno her name can't think of it, but she is blonde, she's got curly hair, she was brilliant at that. She has also been in so many other shows that we've watched. I don't know her name, but I should know her name, I should look that up. But I know what she looks like and I know her face and if I see her in any show, my husband just saw a show that was advertised and he was like, it's got that girl from it's got that woman from Ozark. And I was like, yes, we should watch it. Like anything she's in, I'm going to watch, even though I don't know her name.
It's the same thing when we are in business, particularly if you're buying, well I was going to say from a service base, but any business, if you see somebody's face and you're used to seeing that person turn up and then maybe you go to a networking event and they're on the panel, you're like, yes I follow you, I think you're amazing. Or you see their face on somebody's podcast artwork because they've gone and done a podcast you listen to and you're like, I'm going to listen to that episode because I've seen that woman around, I like her. There's less opportunity for that brand recognition when there's no face in marketing. That's something to consider as well, especially if you're in a very saturated market, it can be difficult for people to see you in a different light if they don't know what you look like.
That's number two, this brand recognition or lack of the first was this lack of personal connection. The third thing that I'd say is a bit of a con if you're looking at faceless marketing is there's less chance for those nonverbal cues that can be said with a face. And I'm saying this as somebody who has the privilege of sight and can see people and I'm very thankful for that. We are seeing or even hearing in people's intonation, in their voice in the way that they're, I mean I guess you could hear in faceless marketing, but when you see somebody roll their eyes or say something in a certain way or their mouth moves a certain way or their sizing, is that what Tyra Banks used to say, where you smile with your eyes, there's so much that comes through in a face that is a beautiful thing to look at regardless of what somebody's saying, their face will say a million things even if they're not even speaking.
That human touch, that idea of like, I read you, I can see that. I know a lot of people like stitch videos on say social media and they'll use like a green screen and it's their face and they're watching along with you or they're reading something, and they might be rolling their eyes or they might be getting excited and you can see their eyes get big. All of those things are not there when there's face marketing. Again, I know I talk so much about humanizing your brand, but these are the small things that, or seemingly small allow us to feel some connection to the person that we're listening to or watching. And I know, I mean I watch a lot of YouTube and I watch a couple of people for years and honestly, I feel like I know them.
I feel like if we ever met with each other in real life, I'd be like, I know everything about you. I know how you laugh, I know how you cry, I know this, I know that. Which is crazy because I've never met them. I've just watched a bunch of their videos on YouTube. But it's taking away that opportunity for that human touch. I guess that's number three. The idea of less human touch, less human visual cues as to who you are. Number four is this idea or I guess potential for people to feel that you are impersonal, that you are lacking emotional engagement or you are lacking or maybe that you're putting yourself at a distance from them, which I guess goes to everything that we've saying that that perceived impartiality, but also Im personality where you are at a distance, you're at a distance.
I saw something written the other day and they were talking about how they went to Taylor Swift. I'm not any Taylor Swift fan, not huge or otherwise, but I have zero much opinion. It's frustrating how much she's in the media right now. But alas they were talking about how they went to her concert and they felt that she was just normal and that they compared her to Beyonce, which is probably what pricked my ears because I am a huge Beyonce fan. They compared her to Beyonce and said when you see Beyonce in concert, she can be cold and she's so distant from the crowd, which I have seen her in concert. I wouldn't disagree with that entirely, but they were saying that because she's so big and she's so up there as Beyonce, there's a detachment and that she can come across as not personal and not warm because of that.
They were saying that Taylor Swift came across just like the girl next door, which I disagree with pretty much everything that they were saying. However, the point is that if you are not showing your face and want to remain private or anonymous or whatever for whatever reason, then it can, it can cause this potential for this perceiving that you are not friendly or you're not super engaged or you're not part of the real community that you're building. That is something else to keep in mind, this potential for perceived Im personality. And then I guess the social media challenge, which goes to all of this is that a lot of interactions on social media should be social. I mean that's what it's there for. We sometimes forget that I would say 90% of the time or 95% of the time I'm on social media, it is in the DMS.
I'm chatting to people, I'm laughing with them, we're sending voice notes. And there's a bunch of people that I would consider friends who I've never met, but we send each other video messages, we send each other voice messages all the time, we check in on each other and I feel like I know them and a large part of how I feel like I know them is because I know their face. I have watched them do a million videos, I've seen them laugh, I have seen them talk about their hair or what they're doing today with their hair or talk about the makeup or, I mean it sounds superficial, but in a lovely way, it's connected me to that person. Or maybe they've got new glasses and I wear glasses, I'm supposed to wear glasses all the time, but I don't always.
But I mean I get a lot of comments about my earrings and I know this is so superficial it sounds like, but sometimes that's just the entry point to get into a conversation with somebody. Someone's like, "I like your earrings, where are they from?" And then you have this whole conversation about how you both love earrings and then it gets into like, what's your business? Tell me about it. What are you struggling with right now? And then we have this whole beautiful deep conversation that came from just, “I like your earrings.” Those sorts of challenges with like genuinely forming that connection and that engagement with somebody engaged isn't necessarily there if you are just engaging with their hands all the time. I think that's number five as well. This also goes to like a lack of relating to somebody because we can relate to people who look very different to us or have different cultural beliefs or have different nationalities or have different upbringings, all sorts of things and we should be relating to people of everyone in the world.
We are all human. I think that also comes up when you can't see somebody and you can't go, okay, I relate to them. Maybe you are of a particular faith and you're like, they were wearing a chain that had this particular symbol on it or that symbol or whatever. And that made me feel like, I'm the same. Or maybe they were just wearing a chain that had like the kids' names on it and you're like, I have a chain with my kids, or they must have kids and therefore there's a thing for us to bond over. There's this lack of relatableness and this challenge to be social on social media. Those are some of the cons. There are many others, but those are some of the cons. Now let's turn to the positive light and think about from a pro perspective, what is good about faceless marketing.
If you are thinking about this and you're like, I've listened to these cons, I'm fine with those things, I'd still like to do it. Why should you want to do it or why would be some of the reasons that you'd like to do it? Again, in no particular order, I've just put some ideas down here. The first is total universal appeal. Because you are not showing a face and because going against everything that I've just said, there is this idea that you can of for everyone because there is no face. People can't necessarily categorize or think things. And we all do it, we all do it, and we all have a bias. When I used to interview people and when I'd gone through a lot of recruitment training as part of my role in marketing in different companies, we were taught all the time about how you will look at somebody and within seconds you'll have made all sorts of judgements about that person.
We do it, we all do it, and we might think that we don't, but it's statistically studied and proven that we do. We look at people and we will make a judgment about what they're wearing, what they look like all sorts of things. All sorts of things. And people do it even if they don't think that they are doing it. By removing that, then potentially you can appear more universal and to a wider audience because of the risk of alienating anybody based on all sorts of things that potentially, I guess could be in your face or the idea that they're seeing who you are visually, I guess you are reducing that a little bit. You're not alienating any particular group. Again, for me, I tend to wear big earrings.
I often sometimes wear glasses as well. I guess it's a bit of a like, I've definitely had moments where I thought I look a little OTT right now, or I might even have like a scarf in my head or my hair a certain way and then I've got these giant earrings and then these big glasses and I have big features of my face as well. I have big eyes, I have a big nose, I have a big mouth. It can be like, who is she? That might turn off a whole bunch of people. Likewise, if I was like super minimalist and or super preppy or something and had like just, I don't know, a pearl necklace and like a twin set on that might turn certain people off, I don't know.
I guess by removing that you have this ability to potentially have a greater universal appeal. That's the first one. The second one I guess is that, and I was talking to somebody about this, I was talking to a client, I think it was in Group Coaching, and we were talking about this and somebody said I know somebody who models and has done well because she doesn't show her face. Unlike if it was a face and a model with the body and the face together and they were doing a whole bunch of brand endorsements or they were doing, let's say they're a content creator and they create a whole bunch of things that they do, like brand content, then other brands might be like, “I've already seen her”, or she's everywhere, or yep, we don't want to use her because she did this work for this brand, this brand, this brand.
If you take away the face, it's less always obvious that it's the same person. This client was talking about how they know a model that does this and has been able to have real longevity in their career because they're able to get all these different brand deals, but people can't tell that they're necessarily the same model working across all these different brands. I guess that longevity potential aspect is also this idea that people don't get sick of you because they're not necessarily always seeing your face. As I talked about at the start, these talking heads where you go to somebody's TikTok and like every single picture is just their head and even potentially wearing the same outfit or the same earrings or whatever. That idea of having a little bit more longevity, and I guess it would depend on what type of business you're in, but if you are in a business where you're regularly creating content all the time, it might be something that allows you to be around a little longer and not be fatiguing people because they can't see her face.
I just saw that person this morning, or I just saw her two seconds ago doing a story. It's almost like we see it as almost like a different person, a different account because we can't see a face. That's number two, this idea of longevity. The third is the idea of adaptability. The idea is that you can adapt to different brands or different situations or different messages because you're not seeing a message and associating it with a face and then seeing that same face may say something completely different. There's this, I mean, not that you want to be inconsistent whether you're doing faceless marketing or not, but there's an idea that I guess you can adapt a bit more than if people are used to seeing that's that person and she always wears big glasses and big earrings and suddenly she's gone like super minimal.
It's like, what's happened? Whereas if they're just seeing a body or even parts of your body, like your face, your hands, or your feet or something else like that or not seeing any part of your body, then there's this idea that you can change direction and if your brand suddenly changes direction or you change business offerings or whatever, your marketing strategy remains a little unaffected because it's not tied to this specific personality of the big earrings, the big glasses. I hope that makes sense. That's the third pro is this idea of adaptability when it comes to faceless marketing. Number four is the potential for timelessness or classic, I guess non-dated marketing. Again, if I'm talking about glasses or earrings these things will go in and out of trend.
I have just purchased some new glasses, I chose them by myself and then when I was picking them up, my son came with me who's 11 and he was like, they're different to the normal glasses that you've had forever. I'm like they are a bit different. And then it took me a couple of weeks to get used to them and in a way I am like, these two, like I don't know right now thing. Having things like that does date your marketing and it dates your message sometimes. Again, this is where we all come into visual judgment from time to time. If you have faceless marketing as part of your shtick, you have faceless marketing, then you have this potential for your content to be repurposed constantly over and over and over and over for years on end.
Particularly images, and content if you're paying a lot of money for a photo shoot if the photo shoot is faceless, you know that you can reuse those clips five years from now and they'll still be fine. It's like whenever you've watched, I don't know if you've ever watched like Law and Order or SVU or any of the law and order stuff, you tend to see that even though you can tell it was filmed a while ago, they usually wear pretty basic nondescript suits or shirts, ties the corporate office, typical office wear, stereotypical wear so that it doesn't date. There's nothing that they're wearing that you're like, that's super cool because everything they're wearing was probably fine 15 years ago and is probably still what a lot of people wear in corporate attire today.
That idea that you can watch that series and everyone looks the same as they looked years ago, their haircuts aren't anything crazy, they don't have trends of like orange tips in their hair or something like that because they're trying to be timeless so that they can have those TV shows on replay forever. The same thing goes with your marketing. If there's no face and no real trends happening in terms of makeup or piercings or tattoo placements or hairstyles or whatever, then you can potentially reuse the content in a way that maybe you can't if you have been adhering to certain trends in something that is going to be shown on the face when you are marketing. That is number four, this potential for timelessness. And number five, when it comes to the pros of faceless marketing is the reduction of any concerns around privacy.
Or maybe I should just say it the other way in the increased privacy, enhanced privacy. If you are somebody who's like, you know what, I don't necessarily want to be recognized, I'm trying to grow maybe you're trying to grow massively in your business, but you don't necessarily want to become like this celebrity or this influencer or well-known figure because you don't want your face on there. Then it allows you to have this anonymous branding and allows you to reduce any issues around privacy or people knowing who you are. Now this could be particularly important if say you are operating out of a very small area or town and you're like, I don't want my whole town to know that this is me. It could be particularly if maybe your business is, I dunno, courting controversy. It could also be if your business is something that potentially you want to sell in the future.
You are trying to make sure that there isn't necessarily a face attached to that because selling a business when there's a face attached to it is harder and or can be harder. Also often means a longer earnout period for the figure that you're getting from the sale because they need you to be part of the face and be part of that brand for a certain amount of time until they can get it to a point where people don't expect you to be the face of the brand. By having faceless marketing, can increase and enhance your privacy. Also if it is your long-term plan to exit from the business and sell the business, then having a faceless marketing plan can work. Likewise, if you are in a particular industry or a business where there is often a turn in terms of staff, then that could also work for you because you're never having like one particular staff, you know where their face is being seen all the time and then they move on and you have to somehow explain why they're no longer a personality on your social media.
That can help as well. There are lots of reasons why faceless marketing can work, but there are also a lot of reasons why it can't work or not that it can't work, but might not be the right choice for you. If you are seeing all these things around faceless marketing and you're thinking maybe that's something I should try, I would just ask you to think about where you're trying to get to in your business, what your marketing is trying to achieve in your business. And then based on the pros and cons that I've shared, is faceless marketing the right thing for you? I would love you to let me know what you thought of this episode and if you're going to try this, if you have already been trying it, if you want to try it more, you can always send us a DM.
I'm @mydailybusiness on Instagram or at mydailybusiness on TikTok for this episode. You'll be able to find all of this in text format over at mydailybusiness.com/podcast/390. If you want to learn all about marketing, including faceless marketing and other ways to do marketing that align with who you are, how you want to show up in the world and your values and beliefs, then please check out Marketing for Your Small Business. It's an online course that you can do at any time. And in March we'll be kicking off the course and coaching component for marketing for your small business. That's where you work through the module and then come to a live coaching session. We have them over one hour every week for nine consecutive weeks. You can find out all the information about that at mydailybusiness.com/courses or at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com. Thank you so much for reading.
