Marketing Metaphoria

Marketing Metaphoria takes a unique approach to understanding the consumer. The concept of investigating subliminal thoughts and unconscious decision making is one that is a departure from the hard analytics of current marketing trends. Throughout the book there are insightful analyses of commercials and marketing endeavors that help to define just how impactful metaphors can be within the advertising space. The “deep metaphors” that the authors stress throughout the book are described in great detail and have meaningful impact in the lives of others. This impact is a stepping stone for the foundation that a rich customer relationship can create, and the use of metaphors through advertising gives companies a way to connect with the customer before even making initial human contact.

While the idea of investigating unconscious thoughts is a relatively novel concept, the use of metaphors is something that has persisted in marketing for quite some time. The book breaks the recurring metaphors down into seven general types, yet this information does not instantly provide a clear path for how to connect with the customer. There is not much detail on how to utilize the proprietary technique (Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique) within individual contexts, making this a book on theory rather than application. The book fails in regard to understanding that metaphors are only truly applicable when used in context to situation and culture, making it a stretch to say that the metaphors are universal in nature. The book provides great insight and thoughts, but does not give flesh through direction and example.

Why do advertising campaigns and new products often fail? Why do consumers feel that companies don’t understand their needs? Because marketers themselves don’t think deeply about consumers’ innermost thoughts and feelings. Marketing Metaphoria is a groundbreaking book that reveals how to overcome this “depth deficit” and find the universal drivers of human behavior so vital to a firm’s success.

Marketing Metaphoria reveals the powerful unconscious viewing lenses–called “deep metaphors”– that shape what people think, hear, say, and do.

Drawing on thousands of one-on-one interviews in more than thirty countries, Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay Zaltman describe how some of the world’s most successful companies as well as small firms, not-for-profits, and social enterprises have successfully leveraged deep metaphors to solve a wide variety of marketing problems. Marketing Metaphoria should convince you that everything consumers think and do is influenced at unconscious levels–and it will give you access to those deeper levels of thinking.

The book is best used when in the hands of a marketing professional, such as a director or consultant, who has the ability to work with a large marketing budget to create the metaphors that the authors discuss. To really get the full utility from Marketing Metaphoria, it is best to read Zaltman’s previous book: “How Customers Think.”