Metaphors in Advertising

Metaphors in Advertising
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Metaphors in Advertising
Metaphors have been historically used by marketers to achieve various objectives, including attracting attention, influencing customer beliefs and attitudes, and evoking imagery. The use of metaphor in advertising has been extensively studied. However, most of the studies have focused on visual metaphors where imagery has been used to evoke certain images and perceptions. There have also been studies on how metaphors in advertising shape a brand (Dehay & Landwehr, 2019). In this research, the focus will be on a research gap on brand personality, which described how a firm shape the way people feel about its products or services. The thesis statement for this research is that metaphors can be used as a brand character to be used as a vehicle to express brand personality and facilitate the brand storytelling approach. The approach to this research is a case study on a selected brand, Red Bull, which has successfully deployed metaphors in creating and maintaining its brand personality of excitement and adventure.
Literature Review
Metaphors in advertising is a common research topic that allows researchers to explore how consumers' attitudes are changed and formed through various advertising elements. Among the most common forms of metaphors studied is visual metaphors, which entails the use of visual elements in ads to generate a positive ad recall. The three main reasons for using visual metaphors as described by Kim and Kim (2019) are attention, pleasure, and elaboration. Many brands will visual metaphors to evoke the feeling of a pleasurable experience. Others will be seeking to create a short-term buzz through immediate attention while others will be seeking to offer demonstrations of elaborations regarding the product or service. Regardless of the usage, the current literature shows that using metaphors helps expand dimensional thinking, enhances responses, and leads to more extensive processing of the ads (Dehay & Landwehr, 2019). How a brand is perceived by consumers can be shaped by the metaphors used in advertising.
Metaphors serve various purposes when used across different contexts. However, the primary objective is usually to shape how a certain message is received by the audience. For example, climate change has been a major concern for countries across the world and governments have tried to get people involved and engaged in creating a solution. However, as the public remained relatively unmoved, the decision to use the metaphor of “the war” or “race” against climate change has made people perceive more risk and urgency in climate change (Flusberg et al., 2017). Similarly, marketers use metaphors in advertising to engage the consumer and evoke positive responses to the adverts (Zhao & Lin, 2019). In many cases, the metaphors seek to amplify a description of a compliment given to a product or service. The question of brand personality is also critically important, even though this stream of research remains relatively limited. Metaphors are strategically used to shape brand personality, especially utilitarian products. As such, five areas of personality are reflected through the metaphors: sincerity, competence, excitement, ruggedness, and sophistication.
Methods
The research methods comprise a case study of a firm that uses metaphors in advertising. The conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) is used to interpret the ads and their implications on the firm’s brand personality. The term conceptual metaphor has been defined as understanding an abstract domain of experience in terms of a more concrete one (Kövecses, 2017). In other words, a conceptual metaphor comprises a set of correspondences between the two domains of experience. The CMT theory is used in the case study to draw a line between the two domains of experience. In doing so, the messages and visuals in the adverts are dissected to understand what meaning is made by the metaphor and what the consumers are expected to interpret from the metaphors. Therefore, the purpose of CMT is to map the conceptual domains.
As a case study, the site of the research is the firm itself. However, the site will not be a physical one since the adverts made by the company can be accessed through different channels. The best approach to the research site is to determine where the adverts are made and understand the context, message, and the metaphors used. Social media is one of the channels used by the company in question. However, live events are also a major part of Red Bull’s advertising, which means that televised or live events can also become critical sources of the required data. Not all the adverts will be considered. However, brief research into the firm will help understand the brand and its marketing approaches, which will help in the selection of the ads that contain the necessary metaphors.
Analysis and Discussion
About Red Bull
Red ...