Analogies, metaphors (and similes)
What are they?
Technically an analogy is a logical argument, demonstrating that if two things are alike in some ways, they will be similar in other ways also. Analogies help provide insight by comparing something less well known with something familiar.
A simile is a ‘is like’ situation – ‘learning to do projectives is like learning to drive a racing car’.
A metaphor is when one thing substitutes for another. Just leave out the ‘is like’ part.
“Marketing is war – we have targets, we plan campaigns to reach strategic objectives, we fight the competition.”
As you can see from the above example, some metaphors are embedded into the way people or organisations think; understanding this enables insight into behaviour. Imagine how differently an organisation would behave if its metaphor for action was gardening – growing loyalty, seeding new products, pruning dead wood.
In practice the linguistic differences between analogies, metaphors and similes are muddied when using these as tools in qualitative research. The technique is about getting people to think about something in terms of something else.
How they work
They enable more creative thinking about the brand by ‘stepping outside the box’. Analogies are based on similarity, so the new thinking can be relevant. The properties of the analogy shed light on the properties of the brand.
When to use them
- For going beyond top of mind impressions
- For more lateral insights
- To start a series of projective exercises
- Not just for finding out about ‘things’ but also experiences.
Timing & Preparation
Analogies are quick and need no preparation. However don’t stop at the analogy – find out why.
How to do it
Either make it into a ‘pretend’ game –
“I’d like to pretend that the brand/s we have here could become different kinds of animals. What animal do you think this one would be?“
Or just ask
“If brand X were an animal, what would it be?” “If your favourite chocolate bar was a holiday destination, what would it be?”
For experiences:
“what is it similar to – a book, a film, another time in your life…?
Use analogies relevant to the respondents – as they must know about what they are comparing. Cars, foods, animals, TV programmes or characters, types of music – there are many analogies you can make.
Pitfalls
- Getting carried away – not understanding the relationship between the product/brand and analogy
- Creating a list of stereotypes which don’t offer real meaning; just exchange one stereotype for another.
Analysis
Look for the key similarities between them, and also see if there is anything else you can learn. If it is slow like a tortoise, does it also have a tough shell and live a long time?
HOW TO CREATE ANALOGIES – useful not only for research, but also for brainstorming, analysis and presentations. Analogies are very good for discovering things you had not realised about your problem/opportunity or situation and enable you to bring out solutions based on the analogy. The first step is to make up an analogy:
- What does your situation or your issue remind you of?
- What other fields experience similar situations?
- Who does similar things but not in your area of expertise?
Often the phrases will include the phrase “…. is like ….” An example could be:
Running a business is like managing a theatre production.
Now use the analogy as a stimulus and gather bridging ideas from it. These ideas could be an aspect of the analogy, or a solution or process which it uses either to work well or to solve a similar issue. You then see how you can apply this new idea in your own situation:
Running a business is like managing a theatre production. A theatre production is split into two halves. Do we need to split our sales team into two sections: pre-sales and after-sales?
HOW TO SPOT EMBEDDED METAPHORS
Sometimes you don’t have to ask – just notice that people are using embedded metaphors.
“He was her rock.” “That throws some light on the question.” “He was carried away by his passions.” “Shut your trap!” “”It’s an emotional rollercoaster.” “ I was getting somewhere, now I am stuck.”
Metaphors are also important to notice and explore because they can give a deep understanding of thought processes. ( See: Metaphors We Live By – George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, and Marketing Metaphoria: The Seven Deep Metaphors by Gerald and Lindsay Zaltman.
For example, there are systematic cultural metaphors e.g.
TIME IS MONEY
You’re wasting my time. How do you spend your time these days? I’ve invested a lot of time in her. You need to budget your time. Is that worth your while? He’s living on borrowed time. You don’t use your time profitably.
Time in our culture is a valuable commodity. It is a limited resource that we use to accomplish our goals. Because of the way that the concept of work has developed in modern Western culture, where work is typically associated with the time it takes and time is precisely quantified, it has become customary to pay people by the hour, week, or year.
In our culture TIME IS MONEY in many ways: telephone message units, hourly wages, hotel room rates, yearly budgets, interest on loans, and paying your debt to society by “serving time.” Thus we understand and experience time as the kind of thing that can be spent, wasted, budgeted, invested wisely or poorly, saved, or squandered.
