Going Deep: A Visit to Metaphoria
“The metaphor is perhaps one of man’s most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.”—José Ortega y Gasset
Harvard Professor Gerald Zaltman and marketing guru Lindsay Zaltman recently released a fascinating book, Marketing Metaphoria.
The Zaltmans call for deep thinking about consumer needs.
They posit that, when companies, especially marketers, think about customers, they do not dig beneath the surface. They argue that beneath the surface are deep customer needs that truly—and often unconsciously—drive our customers’ decisions. To prove it, they conducted more than 12,000 in-depth interviews for more than a hundred clients, in more than 30 countries, using the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique, or ZMET. The results? Seven deep metaphors emerged most often in every sector and country. People who otherwise have little in common—whether cultural background, age, gender, education, occupation, political values, consumer experiences, basic beliefs, religious preference, or almost anything else—shared these metaphors. An effective marketing strategy, the Zaltmans argue, should consider how to tap into them.
These metaphors reflect what psychology and related disciplines call univerals and include
- balance—which focuses on justice, equilibrium, and the interplay of elements
- transformation—including changes in substance and circumstances
- journey—involving the meeting of past, present, and future
- container—encompassing inclusion, exclusion, states of being, and other boundaries
- connection—which focuses on the need to relate to oneself and others
- resource—involving acquisitions and their consequences
- control—the sense of mastery, vulnerability, and well-being
Though the Zaltmans are speaking to marketers and managers, anyone remotely tied to this space needs to listen. These metaphors, coupled with thinking deeply, are the key to true influence on customers. They could help inform product and service positioning, product and service ideas, content strategy, UX strategy, and more. They are the solution to frustrations I have experienced in the interactive marketing and UX worlds. Interactive marketing can be very shallow. I have complained about viewing customers as targets and misapplying psychological principles. UX can have more depth, but people tend to stay in the “safe” realm of usability. In both worlds we hear much discussion about customer behavior. We need to understand and align with consumer thought, which drives the behavior.
May we dare to go deeper!
