How do metaphors in advertising affect the consumer audience? Successful advertising employs textual and pictorial metaphors that connect to their audience on a deep emotional level possibly creating subconscious multiple meanings that benefit the advertising company but dupe the consumer. This is an important issue in a world today that bombards us from our youngest moments with advertisements attempting to persuade us to become consumers even when there is no need to spend money. The problem however is that metaphors in the ads are taking much of our decision-making control away from us and we are often unwitting accomplices. I had assumed that metaphors only operated on a visceral level such as associating happy thoughts with products. While much of what I found in my research supported my ideas, many of the sources also gave compelling examples of other, more subconscious, ways that metaphors work on consumers. Therefore, education about some of the techniques used in advertising is imperative since these same techniques could also be employed in other important aspects of our lives where we need to make completely informed, unbiased decisions. This was an important topic for me because we Texas teachers are required to teach media literacy in school. The more I know about media’s persuasive tactics, the better I can prepare my students with their own weapons to successfully see through media’s tricks.
One of the ways that metaphors in ads affect people is that people often create their own new meaning for advertising metaphors (Dimofte). In some studies consumers created the idea that Brand A was superior to other brands simply because of the metaphor used in Brand A’s ad. While a product directly claiming superiority over other brands “would require proof,” no proof is necessary when consumers create their own positive, though possibly misleading, messages (McQuarrie). Also, “consumers are less likely to argue against [these personal] associations…, and more likely to remember and act on them” (McQuarrie). Ads use universal metaphors to “[persuade] people to buy specific consumer goods that they do not necessarily need” (Ágnes). For example, a marketing company interviewed first-time mothers who were asked to bring eight pictures that metaphorically represented their feelings of being new mothers. The mothers explained to the researchers the emotions associated with their picture choices which helped the company reveal the women’s “unconscious viewing lenses…which shape many new mothers’ experiences as consumers” (xv). This also aided companies in choosing the most effective metaphors “to develop engaging product communications with new parents” (Zaltman, xv). Because “metaphors are often used unquestionably as common sense expressions with which one has grown up,” consumers “[tend] to forget that [these metaphors] are partial conceptualizations of reality” (Ágnes). Because of the often subconscious ways in which metaphors work in ads, several of the source authors recommend educating the public to use more reason in their decision-making and to be less influenced by emotions. “We are all exposed to heavy masses of adverts,” and therefore, “it is necessary to critically analyse [sic] metaphors in order to unmask what they hide and to discover the interests that are at stake in the use of particular metaphors” (Ágnes). Author, John F. Sherry, worries that “we teach our students almost nothing about [advertising practices] and [their] possible effects.” This is not entirely true as Texas students in every grade level are taught to “use comprehension skills to analyze how words, images, graphics, and sounds work together in various forms to impact meaning” ("ELAR TEKS Vertical Alignment”). Works Cited Ágnes, Abuczki. "The Use of Metaphors in Advertising: A Case Study and Critical Discourse Analysis of Advertisements in Cosmopolitan." Argumentum (2009): 18-24. Web. 2 Aug. 2012. Dimofte, Claudiu V., and Richard F. Yalch. "Consumer Response to Polysemous Brand Slogans." Journal of Consumer Research 33.4 (2007): 515-22. Chicago Journals. JSTOR, 08 Dec. 2006. Web. 3 Aug. 2012. "ELAR TEKS Vertical Alignment: Grades K–English IV." English Language Arts and Reading Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills: Kindergarten–English IV. University of Texas System/Texas Education Association, 2009. Web. 7 Aug. 2012. McQuarrie, Edward F., and Barbara J. Phillips. "Indirect Persuasion in Advertising: How Consumers Process Metaphors Presented in Pictures and Words." Association for Consumer Research. N.p., 2005. Web. 27 July 2012. Sherry, John F. "Advertising as a Cultural System." Marketing and Semiotics: New Directions in the Study of Signs for Sale. Ed. Donna Jean Umiker-Sebeok. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter &, 1987. 441-56. Google Books. Web. 3 Aug. 2012. Zaltman, Gerald, and Lindsay H. Zaltman. Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal About the Minds of Consumers. Boston: Harvard Business, n.d. Google Books. Web. 27 July 2012. Ágnes, Abuczki. "The Use of Metaphors in Advertising: A Case Study and Critical Discourse Analysis of Advertisements in Cosmopolitan." Argumentum (2009): 18-24. Web. 2 Aug. 2012.
This article warns that people must be educated about advertisements’ abilities to skew people’s view of reality so that we are not fooled into spending money unnecessarily. This article does this by drawing “attention to the ways the media use and manipulate people's thinking by applying a specific type of figure speech, namely metaphor in advertisements.” Abuczki Agnes explains that because “we are all exposed to heavy masses of adverts, we must always bear in mind that advertising has several tools and tricks to influence us.” For example, “magazines such as the Cosmopolitan have the power to influence the way that people, and therefore, societies construct abstract domains such as interpersonal relationships, health, and beauty.” Therefore, we have to filter the information…and be careful to accept portrayals of people and the world.” These ads are meticulously designed to “[persuade] people to buy specific consumer goods that they do not necessarily need” because “advertising has become a competitive war against commercial rivals for a share of the market.” And because “metaphors are often used unquestionably as common sense expressions with which one has grown up” consumers “[tend] to forget that they are partial conceptualizations of reality.” “Therefore,” Agnes argues, “it is necessary to critically analyse [sic] metaphors in order to unmask what they hide and to discover the interests that are at stake in the use of particular metaphors.” Dimofte, Claudiu V., and Richard F. Yalch. "Consumer Response to Polysemous Brand Slogans." Journal of Consumer Research 33.4 (2007): 515-22. Chicago Journals. JSTOR, 08 Dec. 2006. Web. 3 Aug. 2012. This article explains how the mind is capable of accepting or even creating multiple meanings from advertising. This can be misleading to the consumer, if one of the secondary meanings the consumer creates from the ad’s metaphor give the product better attributes than it actually has. Therefore, educating consumers on their tendency to do this is important to their decisions and actions independent of ads’ metaphors. The authors explain that metaphors in ads can have “multiple meanings that may convey several product attributes” and therefore “it may be possible that unwarranted secondary meanings (not available for explicit evaluation but operating unconsciously nonetheless) be inferred as actual product claims.” For example, the slogan for Ambien sleeping pills is “Works like a dream.” This slogan may “discourage consumers from closely scrutinizing some of its negative side effects or from trying substitutes (after all, this pill appears to be a flawless solution to sleeplessness).” In fact, people’s minds are so tuned in to possible multiple meanings, that when 100 people for the game show Family Feud were asked to “’Name a place you are likely to see skeletons.’ About 65% of the respondents … named the closet.” Because “people’s mental representations for the setting of a skeleton split between two possible interpretations…—one figurative, one literal,” it is easy to see how consumers could also easily accept more than one possible meaning from a slogan. Because metaphors in advertising have the potential “to both inform and misinform…, efforts should be made to understand [advertising] more fully in future research.” "ELAR TEKS Vertical Alignment: Grades K–English IV." English Language Arts and Reading Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills: Kindergarten–English IV. University of Texas System/Texas Education Association, 2009. Web. 7 Aug. 2012. Because almost all of the sources about power of metaphors in advertising suggest that consumers should be educated on them, it seemed appropriate to add what Texas schools are doing to educate its children on media literacy. The Texas Education Association (TEA) recognizes the power in advertising and other media today and so Texas students in every grade level will, according to Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), “use comprehension skills to analyze how words, images, graphics, and sounds work together in various forms to impact meaning.” For example, according to the twelfth –grade-level TEKS, students must be able to “analyze how words, images, graphics, and sounds work together in various forms to impact meaning,” “evaluate how messages presented in media reflect social and cultural views in ways different from traditional texts,” “evaluate the interactions of different techniques (e.g., layout, pictures, typeface in print media, images, text, sound in electronic journalism) used in multi-layered media,” and “evaluate how one issue or event is represented across various media to understand the notions of bias, audience, and purpose.” McQuarrie, Edward F., and Barbara J. Phillips. "Indirect Persuasion in Advertising: How Consumers Process Metaphors Presented in Pictures and Words." Association for Consumer Research. N.p., 2005. Web. 27 July 2012. This article explains the various effects of metaphorical language and images in advertising as opposed to advertising that uses literal or straightforward language and images. The authors did a study comparing the effects of three different approaches to advertising for the dishwashing detergent brand, plus: a straightforward claim, a verbal metaphor, and a visual metaphor. Although the participants recognized that the ads communicated the same message, “consumers who saw the ads with the verbal and visual metaphors had more positive thoughts about the product (e.g., “Plus is an industrial strength cleaner,” “Plus protects dishes from scratching,” and “Plus leaves no detergent residue on dishes”). These metaphor-led, consumer-created ideas suggested that this brand is superior to other brands. “Note that all of these thoughts would require proof if the advertiser stated them in a straightforward claim” but not necessarily when consumers create their own positive, though possibly misleading, messages. However, if the consumer comes up with a positive association on his or her own, it is difficult to guard against its subconscious effects and the product’s company is not held liable for associations that consumers create on their own. Also, “consumers are less likely to argue against [these] associations…, and more likely to remember and act on them” lending even more power to the advertisement. The authors suggest possible legal ramification “beyond a focus on whether a claim made in words is true or false.” The authors also argue for “efforts to educate consumers to attend more closely to pictorial claims and to scrutinize them more critically.” Sherry, John F. "Advertising as a Cultural System." Marketing and Semiotics: New Directions in the Study of Signs for Sale. Ed. Donna Jean Umiker-Sebeok. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter &, 1987. 441-56. Google Books. Web. 3 Aug. 2012. Here the author explores a variety of definitions and effects of advertising especially as it pertains to culture and society. Sherry encourages educators to teach the children about the powerful techniques such as metaphors in advertising. He warns that advertising is extremely influential and yet we teach our students almost nothing about it and its possible effects. This is particularly pertinent to my topic because my topic concerns the effects of metaphors in advertising. Sherry wants educators “to become especially attentive to the vulnerable consumers” (456) such as the children because they often watch many hours of television every day and because they lack “a spirit of critical realism” and therefore are more likely to become “unwitting” targets as they unconsciously absorb the advertisers’ messages of consumerism. Sherry encourages consumers “to discover the social impact of advertising” and thereby “enhance their understanding and enjoyment of advertising” (456). Therefore media literacy education in the schools is imperative because advertising’s goal is to “socialize individuals into a culture of consumption” (447) and it does this by influencing “our sense of reality” (444). Sherry’s article confirmed what I already suspected about the powers of advertising and the importance of understanding their methods of persuasion. Zaltman, Gerald, and Lindsay H. Zaltman. Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal About the Minds of Consumers. Boston: Harvard Business, n.d. Google Books. Web. 27 July 2012. This article shows the lengths to which advertising companies go to delve deeply into the subconscious minds of the consumer to most effectively employee their weapons known as “deep metaphors.” These “deep metaphors…structure what we think, hear, say, and do” (xv). Seven of the deep metaphors are “balance, transformation, journey, container, connection, resource, and control” and they “account for about 70 percent of all deep metaphors we have encountered in our consumer research.” Marketers learn how to use these universal metaphors more effectively to create more persuasive ads. Most telling was a description of the type of consumer research that helps marketers to find the most powerful metaphors to target a particular audience. Zaltman and Zaltman tell about a marketing company that interviewed first-time mothers who were asked her to bring eight pictures that represent their feelings of being new mothers. The mothers explained their picture choices and the emotions associated with each helping the company reveal the women’s “unconscious viewing lenses…which shape many new mothers’ experiences as consumers” (xv) and “provided significant direction in finding new product ideas, how to position new and existing products, and how to develop engaging product communications with new parents” (xv). The Meaning of the Body, Johnson
Ch 12 Mark Johnson first explains philosophy’s purpose in connecting life’s purposes with meaning and value. He then summarizes his main points in the book and closes by defining the term body in terms of “the body-mind” to show the inseparability of the two in his theory. That the reason meaning cannot only be embodied in the mind is that our experiences come to us through our senses, our bodily senses, and therefore are an integral part of our meaning-making. Not only that, but a language-only meaning theory is false because we can express meaning in other, non-linguistic ways as well. Yet, much of philosophy dismisses this idea since only meaning in language, not in art, poetry, gestures, etc., can be measured. Ironically, it is language which often leads to “out all-too-frequent failure to capture the depth and richness of our experience” (267). Johnson elaborates on the “meaning of meaning” as being “the meaning of something is its relations, actual and potential, to other qualities, things, events, and experiences” (265). Johnson says that the of “philosophy of language” of the ‘40s and ‘50s studied “only observable things” such as “concepts, setneces, propositions, and words” and divided statements into “descriptive, truth-stating sentences” and “expressive” language whose purpose was “lacking significant cognitive content” (270-1). Is this view of expressive language equivalent to the traditional, Western philosophy of emotion and feeling (such as poetry and art) that Johnson (and Turner and Lakoff) has been discussing? I think so and in fact the dualist-mind/body theory immediately came to mind when I read this part. The Meaning of the Body, Johnson
Ch 11 Mark Johnson explains that, like art, music “appears to be a second-class citizen” as far as its meaning goes (235) because it cannot be easily put into a propositional phrase like linguistics can which is why Johnson is “not a fan of the MUSIC AS LANGUAGE metaphor” (236). However, music is extremely meaningful and full of metaphors. Johnson argues that because music presents “human experience, feeling, and thinking in concrete, embodied forms” that it presents “meaning in its deepest sense” (236). Two of the main metaphors we use for music are time and movement through which we experience the tension, drama, longing, speeding up, fulfillment, and “anticipation and anxious, energetic forward movement” (240-1). Using “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “Something” as examples, Johnson shows how these emotions that emanate through us from the music also usually correlate with the lyrics’ meanings as well. Finally, Johnson argues that because “musical motion is as real as temporal motion” then music really does move in that “we experience musical events as fast or slow, rising or falling, creeping or leaping, pausing and stopping” (255). What does Johnson mean by “people’s impoverished views about linguistic meaning” (236)? Perhaps this is referencing what he discussed in the previous chapter with regards to art. Many people are unable to recognize true meaning being communicated through music and art. Not only that, but music is often looked at being some type of language and therefore “whatever meaning music has must be measured relative to linguistic meaning” (260). However, “music is meaningful in specific ways that some language cannot be” even if “it shares in the general embodiment of meaning that underlies all forms of symbolic expressions” (260). The Meaning of the Body, Johnson
Ch 10 Mark Johnson explains that art has not received the same amount of deference as language as far as bearing true meaning. He then goes onto to explain why this logic is false for poetry and art. Starting with Plato and on to Enlightenment Europe to Western philosophy and to Immanuel Kant, art was considered “a matter of feeling” (211) and a “lower” (210) faculty and therefore, “not part of meaning proper” (209). In fact, Kant argues that “if [man] proclaims something to be beautiful, then he requires the same liking from others; he then judges not just for himself but for everyone, and speaks of beauty as if it were a property of things” (215). However, Johnson argues that “aesthetics [is] not just about art, beauty, and taste, but rather [is] about how human beings experience and make meaning” (212). What does Johnson mean when he says, “linguistic meaning is parasitic on the primordial structures and processes of embodied interaction, quality, and feeling” (218)? Does he mean that the definition of “linguistic meaning” held by much of Western philosophy hurts people’s attitudes toward art’s ability to communicate true and realistic meaning. I’m having a difficult time agreeing with Johnson especially when he analyzes Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger. He says, “We do not really think about what is transpiring as we read this passage so much as we feel and experience the qualitative whole that pervades and unifies the entire space” (224). What type of reader does he mean by this? A freshman in high school or an English major? I don’t see most high school students and even some English majors getting the same experience and therefore deeper meaning from poetry as Johnson gets from his readings. The Meaning of the Body, Johnson
Ch 9 Mark Johnson studies “how abstract concepts are defined by conceptual metaphors” (176) especially as they pertain to mathematics and psychology and other sciences. He then explains literalists’ view and why they’re faulty. Johnson supports his thesis by stating “that image schemas…have their own logic, which can be applied to abstract conceptual domains via primary and higher-level conceptual metaphors” thereby serving “as the basis for inferences about abstract entities and operations” (181). Using the container metaphor as an example, to support his theory. I have two questions. First, when it says that literalist, John Searle sees all meaning as reducible to “states of affairs in the world” (196), does it mean that he recognizes in as indicating “a state or condition that something or somebody is experiencing” such as in the example “The banking industry is in a flux” (Encarta Dictionary)? Obviously, Johnson would see this as a container metaphor. Second, would Johnson ever see the simile “Mary is like a block of ice” as a literal statement in that Mary and the ice have a similarity? This is sort of a compromise between Johnson’s view and Donald Davidson and Richard Rorty’s literalist views as described on pages 197-8. I doubt Johnson would concede as much, however, since likening physical coldness to an emotion could never be literal to him. QAI – How do metaphors in advertising work in affecting the audience?
Thesis – Successful advertising employs textual and pictorial metaphors that connect to their audience on a deep emotional level. Sources – All of the sources are giving this same message. However, finding just the right metaphor is not an easy task nor is it cheap and not all companies are aware of the effectiveness of metaphors in ads and are missing out. However, once the right metaphor is found it can be a powerful tool in creating a successful campaign. The most effective metaphors are usually fairly universal: balance, transformation, journey, container, connection, resource, and control for example. Because the metaphors are universal, the audience members more easily create their own specific connection to it and therefore to the product. This not only makes the advertising seem personal and memorable, but also credible since the audience members create their own individual connection or multiple connections to the product. Also, advertisers might be able to use metaphors in advertising to create misleading messages that they could not create with straight-forward statements. Two of the sources, therefore, suggest that consumers’ should be educated on these powerful persuasive tools. The Meaning of the Body, Johnson
Ch 8 Mark Johnson studies cognitive neuroscience studies to support within his embodiment theory that both concrete concepts and “abstract concepts…rely on sensorimotor areas of the brain and are thus embodied” (157) as represented in neuronal clusters. Johnson breaks his argument into three parts: 1) the sensorimotor system of the brain is multimodal, 2) the concrete concepts involve some of the same neuronal clusters as in perception and action, and 3) abstract concepts might be tied to the sensorimotor system (160). Experiments with monkeys have helped to support each of these ideas. Unknown to Johnson is whether “we use our sensorimotor neural circuitry for abstract reasoning, via metaphorical mapping structures” (167). I don’t know that I understood enough of this chapter to ask an intelligent question, and I’m not even sure that the above summaries or my handmade illustration is accurate. Therefore, my question is more about comprehension of the last paragraph on page 156. What does Johnson mean by “the value of neuroscience…is not merely negative and critical, for it can also suggest plausible constructive hypotheses about the nature of mind, thought, and language” (156)? By reading the paragraph above it, I guess he means that neuroscience results are critical of and negative toward the theories common to Western philosophy. The Meaning of the Body,
Johnson Ch 7 Mark Johnson argues that image schemas and a social environment support and inform the idea of embodied cognition as well as higher cognitive activities. Not only is thought not isolated within the brain, but it is inherent throughout the world. Johnson says that through our five senses, “the environment enters into the very shape of our thought, sculpting our most abstract reasoning out of our embodied interactions with the world” (154). Johnson argues that it is our ability to notice “recurring shapes, relations, and patterns, and that these patterns exist as topological features of our neural maps” (135). These “basic structures of sensorimotor experience” are called “image schemas” and are “a dynamic, recurring pattern of organism-environment interactions” (136). Some of these image schemas include “CENTER-PERIPHERY,” “COMPULSION,” “ATTRACTION,” “BLOCKAGE OF MOVEMENT,” “VERTICALITY (Up-Down),” “BALANCE,” “SOURCE-PATH-GOAL,” and “SCALARITY” (136-7). However, because many image schemas “operate beneath the level of conscious awareness,” we must “employ standard explanatory methods of linguistics, psychology, and neuroscience” (138) and aid our ability to higher cognitive activities. When Johnson discusses the “basic structures of sensorimotor experience by which we encounter the world that we can understand and act within” (136), is he referring to percept and conceptualizing? Percept is the continual flow of our environment which is perceived through sensorimotor experience, so they might not be the same thing, but they are most likely related. Also, it is through our purposeful conceptualizing of the percept that we experience the world in our own personal way so again this sounds like they are related if not synonymous. |
Gina IvensI'm an English teacher at Boerne HS. I hope to receive my MA in English and Curriculum & Instruction in the fall of '12 or spring of '13. ArchivesCategories
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