Connecting with Consumers

Connecting with consumers has never been more challenging. However, are we doing everything we can to deeply connect on the rational and emotional benefits of our products?

In a recent book, Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal about the Minds of Consumers, the authors Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay Zaltman, discuss seven of the most commonly used deep metaphors that companies use to deeply connect with consumers.

Below is an excerpt from an interview conducted with the authors:

Q: What are deep metaphors?
A: Deep metaphors are basic frames or orientations we have toward the world around us. They are "deep" because they are largely unconscious and universal. They are "metaphors" because they recast everything we think about, hear, say, and do. Because deep metaphors shape the way we engage the world, an understanding of them is necessary to explain why we think and act as we do.
While relatively few in number, much like core emotions, each deep metaphor may take many different forms. For example, balance may involve social, psychological, physical, and aesthetic themes. The small number of deep metaphors, each with many variations, and often working together, constitute a silent but rich and powerful language of thought and expression.
It is a language that marketers must learn to speak if they are to understand and connect meaningfully with their customers.

Q: What to your mind are a few effective marketing campaigns that have utilized knowledge of deep metaphors? What did they do that was unusual or insightful?
A: Two classic campaigns come to mind. One is Coca-Cola's "I'd like to teach the world to sing," which invokes the deep metaphor of connection and the ability of the brand to bring diverse people together. It also engaged the deep metaphor of social balance by stressing with a music metaphor the concept of harmony.
A second campaign is the Michelin tire ad portraying the tire as a container—another deep metaphor—of safety for one's family, especially children. The last version of the ad, which ran for many years, showed a child positioned within a tire on a wet surface accompanied by several pairs of animals. This invoked imagery of Noah's Ark, one of the most famous containers of all time that withstood a major catastrophe.

Connecting with Consumers Using Deep Metaphors