Marmite, Unilever’s famous spread. Has always divided the nation between love and hate. It's a cultural phenomenon. And over the years Marmite have produced some award-winning, much loved and memorable creative work bringing this to life. But all this time Marmite have been questioning, why? Is it fate?

“You either love it or hate it.” It’s a phrase that’s been synonymous with Marmite for over 20 years. This year, the brand delved into what really forms one’s opinion on the sticky stuff and discovered a surprising answer: science! It turns out there’s a genetic explanation for likely Marmite preference.

Our digital experience needed to encourage the British public to re-visit Marmite, butter their toast and discover their fate - are they lovers or haters?

The TasteFace experience did two jobs for product consideration - prompting our audience to dig out their Marmite from the back of the cupboard and reconsider it as an everyday spread, and to provide a fresh, engaging way of distributing free samples and encouraging their consumption.

The experience needed to appeal to the whole family, so we used a fun pixel art style throughout. This engaged the user and provided a distinction between an entertaining experiment and the more formal science behind the project itself.

Once the user progressed through the easy-to-follow instructions, they were taken to a front-facing camera view, so we could reduce the chance of user error and they could choose the shot. They were then shown a countdown before recording started.

We captured a short video of the user taking the taste test and used Microsoft’s emotional analysis API to evaluate their face based on eight emotions. The output was fed into our bespoke algorithm that translated it into a score from ‘100% hater’ to ‘100% lover’.

We ensured the results revealed to the user were not only easily shareable, directly from the experience, but also something they would want to share. Based on the insight that users are more likely to share something they’ve personalised, we included a number of filters that could be applied to the GIF and corresponded to the user’s result. People could proudly assert their ‘lover’ status or share an amusing GIF of their negative reaction.

The TasteFace experience extended the reach and message of the Marmite campaign, allowing us to democratise the process of ‘testing’ for the gene and providing a reason to sample the product and get the whole family involved.