Advertising is riddled with metaphors. Think about it . . . if you drive a Suburu, you love and protect your kids more than, say VW owners, who are apparently pretty happy people. But VW owners can't compare to the happiness Diet Coke drinkers experience. As a matter of fact, Diet Coke makes consumers like Taylor Swift feel 22 again. Ah! What a great age! Nonetheless, 22 simply cannot compare to a (circa) 8-month old baby dancing the Kalinka while his parent sip on a Pepsi Next. What magic we feel as the everfescent, brown battery acid goes down our pipes! It's like, well, a baby doing cartwheels.
You get the point.
Metaphors are comparisons that use one thing to describe another – her boss is a wicked witch, he had all day to throw the ball, driving a Suburu means the owner is a saftey-conscious person, etc. Madison Avenue continues to invest in the power of metaphors while laughing its way to Wall Street. Why? Because they work.
Connie Williams, Chief Knowledge Officer, CMO and General Managing Partner at a company called Synecticsworld, Inc. says, “Metaphors can be a great untapped resource for brands to achieve greatness and for insight-led companies to find the unfulfilled wants and needs in the marketplace.” AND, they make us, the consumers, feel good.
However, metaphors have a best-kept-secret second job. They help solve problems, too. I'm not talking about choosing the safest car or best-tasting softdrink (although I could be). I am referring to everyday issues facing every organization on earth. How can we cut costs without cutting quality? How we engage our back office employees in marketing strategies? How can we encourage parents to spend more time with their kids' homework after working a full day? And so on.
The Creative Industries Research Institute (2008), a subsidiary of Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand quotes Buckminster Fuller, an American architect, inventor, visionary, and author as explaining the use of metaphors this way: “all things, regardless of their dissimilarity, could somehow be linked together, either in a physical, psychological or symbolic way.”
So instead of tackling the problem at hand, the solution team could brainstorm about a completely non-related issue such as gardening during a summer with limited rainfall, for example. This seemingly silly exercise can accomplish two major objectives: 1) it can encourage particants to contribute without fear of being judged or shot down (it's safer to talk about pruning azaleas than about the women in accounts payable who watch the timeclock), hence adding more ideas to considerand for a possible solution; and 2) by thinking about a unrelated topic, particpants will consider options not usually associated with the problem at hand (especially when guided by a trained facilitator).
Hey, the process works - ask any "mad man".
That's my two cents for this week. Thanks for tuning in and I'll see you again next week.
-Natalie
http://synecticsworld.com/imagine-that/
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