TasteFace

Background

"You either love it or hate it." A phrase that's been synonymous with Marmite since its creation. This year, the brand turned to science to discover the reason why the sticky stuff has long divided the nation. In partnership with leading boffins, the 'Marmite Gene' was discovered. It turns out your genetics determine whether you're born a lover, or a hater. But how could science get families actually tasting it, again?

Idea

TasteFace was an innovative sampling mobile web experience that invited people to try Marmite, and used facial recognition technology to analyse their reaction to it. TasteFace built on the Microsoft Emotion API, that recognised accurately read facial expressions across a set of eight emotions. Then a bespoke algorithm was built to convert these eight emotions into a sliding scale with love at one end and hate at the other.. At the end of the experience, test-takers were rewarded with a customisable reaction GIF to share across their social channels, announcing their Marmite-y fate. The TasteFace experience prompted the audience to dig out Marmite from the back of the cupboard and reconsider it as an everyday spread, and provided a fresh, engaging way of distributing free samples and encouraging trial. As well as getting Marmite back on the breakfast table, the wealth of user generated content and data acquired through the sample and testing process has great potential for use in future communication - and some of the brand's biggest advocates have also been connected.

Results

The experience has extended the reach of the above-the-line campaign, allowing the public to take part in the experiment. Over 436k people visited TasteFace to date and spent 2.5 minutes, on average, playing with the content. The Campaign beat X-Factor to the top trending spot on Twitter. Importantly, the product got in people's hands and people were inspired to try it. Within the first 6 weeks over 50k samples were distributed with two more paid media pushes still to come. As a result, sales of Marmite increased 60% in Tesco. TasteFace allowed the generation of PR coverage over and above a traditional ATL campaign, receiving coverage from tech-focused blogs and drawing the attention of Microsoft's AI Division, who expressed an interest in working with AnalogFolk as creative partners as a result of this activity. It was also recognised as Campaign magazine's #2 Digital Innovation of 2017. Finally, this activity provided rich consumer data, allowing them to talk to lovers and haters with tailored messaging while using the initial findings to inspire further creative work.