Face in the crowd

AUCKLAND, Today: Images of faces – any faces – are a proven way to attract the attention of passersby, according to the cognoscenti at Phantom Billstickers and – with thousands of ads featuring framed portraits on streets throughout Godzone – they should know.

Phantom ceo Robin McDonnell says: “Our brains have evolved to look for faces. Studies with heat maps generated by eye-tracking technology show that viewers are most drawn to human faces, and particularly eyes.

“We’re in the street poster business but really we’re in the attention business. 

“These are the rules (but you can break them)!”

Or to put it another way, we install frames in public spaces and fill them each week with posters, but a frame without an eye-catching visual inside it is simply a wooden quadrilateral.

“Your audience has a shorter attention span than a goldfish

“Your audience is made up of smart, incredible individuals leading rich and complicated lives. Your message is one of thousands they’re exposed to every day. If you want to be noticed, you’d better be interesting.

“As Microsoft found out, eight seconds is all you’ve got.”

• phantombillstickers.com