Посты с тэгом: advertising

Marketing Innovation: Pants on Fire and the Metaphor Tool

Published date: December 5, 2011 в 3:00 am

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Insurance companies continue to battle it out as the industry emerges from the global financial crisis.  They are spending huge sums on national advertising to establish brand loyalty and earn trust.  But consumers have a hard time distinguishing between the many undifferentiated insurance products.  They tend to shop on price as a result.  So insurance advertisers have to walk a fine line acknowledging the importance of price while slipping in their value propositions around service and other features.

Here is an example from the long-running Progressive campaign featuring the lovable character, Flo.  It uses the metaphor tool.  The Metaphor is the most commonly used tool in marketing communications because it is a great way to attach meaning to a newly-launched product or brand. The Metaphor Tool takes a well-recognized and accepted cultural symbol and manipulates it to connect to the product, brand, or message.

The tool is one of eight patterns embedded in most innovative commercials.  Jacob Goldenberg and his colleagues describe these simple, well-defined design structures in their book, “Cracking the Ad Code,” and provide a step-by-step approach to using them.  The tools are:

Marketing Innovation: Red Tape and The Inversion Tool

Published date: June 20, 2011 в 3:00 am

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"Red tape" is defined as the collection or sequence of forms and procedures required to gain bureaucratic approval for something, especially when oppressively complex and time-consuming.  That's how Southwest Airlines describes other airlines' frequent flyer programs versus its new Rapid Rewards program which has none of the traditional limitations like blackouts and point expiration.  In a series of highly innovative commercials, Southwest demonstrates not one but two of the eight advertising tools described by Professor Jacob Goldenberg in "Cracking the Ad Code."  These ads are flawlessly executed, funny, and memorable. 

Take a look:

The first pattern is the Inversion Tool.  It conveys what would happen if you didn’t have the product…in an extreme way.  It shows the benefits “lost”  by not using the product.  It is best used when the brand and its central benefits are well understood by the viewer. It is particularly useful when you want to emphasize a secondary benefit as Southwest has done by emphasizing their less restrictive loyalty program.  To use the Inversion Tool, start with the components of the brand promise.  Take each one away one at a time and envision in what ways the consumer would be affected…in an extreme way…if it did not have this aspect of the promise.

As Goldeberg notes, an important tactic of Inversion is to show unlimited generosity, understanding, and empathy for the poor consumer who does not use your product.  The idea is to convey your product as having great understanding for your dilemma and generously suggesting assistance.  The Southwest commercials do this perfectly by showing their employees rescuing travelers from being all wrapped (literally) in the competitor's red tape.

The second pattern is the Metaphor Tool.  It takes a well-recognized and accepted cultural symbol and manipulates it to connect to the product, brand, or message.  The trick is to do it in a clever way.  The process is called fusion, and there are three versions:  Metaphor fused to Product/Brand, Metaphor fused to Message, and Metaphor fused to both the Product/Brand and Message.  In this example, the huge red tape ball represents the bureaucracy of other airlines' frequent flyer programs.  The commercial fuses the red tape metaphor against the competition's weak spot. 

Brilliant!

Marketing Innovation: The Metaphor Tool

Published date: April 4, 2011 в 3:00 am

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The Metaphor is the most commonly used – and abused – tool in marketing communications, especially in western cultures.  It is a great way to attach meaning to a newly-launched product or brand.  But some approaches are more effective than others.

The tool is one of eight patterns embedded in most innovative commercials.  Jacob Goldenberg and his colleagues describe these simple, well-defined design structures in their book, “Cracking the Ad Code,” and provide a step-by-step approach to using them.  The tools are:
1. Unification
2. Activation
3. Metaphor
4. Subtraction
5. Extreme Consequence
6. Absurd Alternative
7. Inversion
8. Extreme Effort

The Metaphor Tool takes a well-recognized and accepted cultural symbol and manipulates it to connect to the product, brand, or message.  The trick is to do it in a non-obvious, clever way.  The process is called fusion, and there are three versions:  Metaphor fused to Product/Brand, Metaphor fused to Message, and Metaphor fused to both the Product/Brand and Message.  Here is an example:

Innovation Sighting: Cannes Lions 2010

Published date: June 28, 2010 в 3:00 am

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Cannes Lions, the International Advertising Festival, is the world’s only truly global meeting place for professionals in the communications industry.  It celebrates advertising winners each year in a variety of categories.  The 57th festival was held last week.

The Young Lions Film Competition is held the same week.  Two creatives have 48 hours to write, shoot and edit a 30-second commercial. At the beginning of the week, the teams receive a brief from a charity chosen by the Festival. Forty-eight hours later, the teams’ work is judged by the Film Lions jury.  Here is a winning commercial from this year’s Young Lions Film Competition:


This commercial is an example of the Unification tool, one of the eight advertising tools described by Dr. Jacob Goldenberg and his colleagues in their new book, Cracking the Ad Code.  The tool works by making new use of existing resources.  There are two unification approaches: use components of the medium, or recruit a new medium in the environment.  In this example, a water goblet has been given the additional “job” of “sounding the alarm” about the lack of access to water.  Commercials using this tool tend to be cost effective, memorable, and most importantly, creative.

Here are all eight of the advertising tools.

  1. Unification
  2. Activation
  3. Metaphor
  4. Subtraction
  5. Extreme Consequence
  6. Absurd Alternative
  7. Inversion
  8. Extreme Effort

If you had only 48 hours to innovate an award-winning commercial in Cannes, these tools would be the best  place to start!

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