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Connecting Connecting With Consumers Using Deep Metaphors - Harvard Business School
Connecting Connecting With Consumers Using Deep Metaphors - Harvard Business School
they do that was unusual or insightful? A: Two classic campaigns come to mind. One is Coca-Cola's "I'd like to teach the world to sing," which invokes the deep metaphor of connection and the ability of the brand to bring diverse people together. It also engaged the deep metaphor of social balance by stressing with a music metaphor the concept of harmony. A second campaign is the Michelin tire ad portraying the tire as a containeranother deep metaphorof safety for one's family, especially children. The last version of the ad, which ran for many years, showed a child positioned within a tire on a wet surface accompanied by several pairs of animals. This invoked imagery of Noah's Ark, one of the most famous containers of all time that withstood a major catastrophe. Q: How do you see the future of marketing? Is marketing becoming more or less responsive to consumer needs and desires? A: Marketers in general have always tried to be responsive to consumer needs and preferences. The issue is whether they do so as well as they could by using the most appropriate or insight-bearing tools and techniques. The high failure rate of new offerings and the failure of existing offerings to achieve expected returns suggests that many marketers are not thinking deeply enough about their customers or consumers. And they fail to think deeply enough partly because they lack deep insights to think about. Fortunately, recent advances in various disciplines are providing concepts and techniques enabling marketers to dig into what consumers don't know they know. As these advances in understanding human behavior are used by marketers, they will be able to serve their markets with greater success. Q: What are you working on next? Gerald Zaltman: I have had a long-standing interest in how managers approach messy or ill-structured problems. These are nonroutine problems with no clear solution. It may not even be evident what the problem is, only that there is one. I have collected considerable data on this topic and will be conducting further interviews to understand the qualities of mind that contribute to success in dealing with this important class of problems. Lindsay Zaltman: I have been exploring new ways to leverage the power of deep metaphors in other research methods. For instance, I have been developing an applied ethnographic approach that allows us to see how deep metaphors influence the behaviors and actions of consumers by spending time with them in their actual environment. This may mean spending time with consumers by observing them in their homes, on shopping excursions, at social functions, or at their jobs.
Insights from this approach can be used for improving product design, reengineering retail environments, or simply as a way to better understand one's customers. Excerpt from Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal about the Minds of Consumers By Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay Zaltman
that my call is very important to them and then they put me on hold forever, and I keep thinking, 'Like yeah, right, I am really important.' " "I keep going back to them because they provide a really high-quality productbecause they worry about their competition, not because they care about me." "All these points programs. Or the coupons. I use them. But basically they are buying me; they are not being loyal to me. It kind of says, 'We must do these extra things because we are not doing enough with what we give you to begin with." Many other consumer quotes suggest an asymmetry in loyalty. That is, the consumers feel more strongly connected to the brands than the brands are to themnot a healthy or secure foundation for building brand loyalty. Companies cannot simply offer quality products, because competitors can always emulate a quality product. Companies must convey that they have the consumer's best interest at heart. This is one reason consumers use their perceptions of how firms treat their employees as a proxy for how firms value their customers. As one consumer put it, "If they don't treat their staff well, you can hardly expect them to care about us."
Summary
We human beings have a fundamental drive or need for connection and, at times, for being disconnected. This has roots in our evolutionary history, because individuals and groups with the ability to bond and support one another were more likely to survive. Thus, the need for affiliation became an enduring driver of behavior. This need has extended to individual identity; in fact, it is said that the mind is not the possession of the individual and that our notions of self are determined significantly by the various individuals and groups with whom we connect. Sometimes, connection is expressed through the consumption of material things that reflect social membership, help us feel accepted, or demonstrate our relative position in society. Consumers develop strong attachments to objects, brands, and companies. Marketing managers must be sensitive to several connection-related issues: Connection is a two-way street, and consumers are most apt to feel loyalty to brands and companies if they feel those in charge have a commitment to them. Products and services can provide connection or disengagement, or both. The offerings may be a badge showing informal membership in a group or society (connection), may offer a means of being apart from others (status via disengagement), or may afford the consumer private time (disengagement). Other goods and services provide a sense of
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inner connection and sense of connection with others. Managers must identify the dimensions of connection that are most relevant or could be made more relevant to consumers. For example, managers need to consider whether a product offers connection with, or disconnection from, others or oneself. And they must decide
whether a connection is physical, social, or mental. Once these levels of connection are understood, marketing managers can better show how a product or service attends to the consumer's basic human needs. Book excerpt used with the permission of Harvard Business School Press from Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal
about the Minds of Consumers. Copyright 2008 Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay H. Zaltman.