Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal about the Minds of Consumers

by Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay H. Zaltman

Book Overview

Why do advertising campaigns and new products often fail? Why do consumers feel that companies don't understand their needs? Because marketers themselves don't think deeply about consumers' innermost thoughts and feelings. Marketing Metaphoria is a groundbreaking book that reveals how to overcome this depth deficit and find the universal drivers of human behavior so vital to a firm's success.

Marketing Metaphoria reveals the powerful...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1422121151
• ISBN13: 9781422121153
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Length: 230 Pages
• Weight: 1.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Timely and much needed

The Zaltmans' new book can truly be described as insightful. By way of transparency, I should point out that I am priveleged enough to have Jerry Zaltman's endorsement on the back cover of my own recently released book, "Brand Meaning." Though I have never met him, I know Jerry to be an astute and visionary commentator on consumer behavior. Anybody who has read "How Customers Think" will know that. What "Marketing Metaphoria" illustrates so well is that only by probing deep into the way people think about and view the world around them can one hope to connect with consumers in a visceral and enduring way. The book provides a framework for identifying such "implicit cognitive influences" (see back cover) - here in the form of deep matephors - and that is what makes it important reading.Brand Meaning

Brilliant and well-needed resource for marketing

...as a professional who has introduced neuroscience into leadership, I can personally attest to the importance of "thinking more about our thinking" when it comes to why we do what we do. Though we all on some level know this, Zaltman has written brilliantly and pragmatically these sometimes forgotten truths that truly affect decision making. This is a classic!

A Resource to Transform Your Thinking

By way of full disclosure, I was a graduate assistant for Jerry Zaltman when he was a Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Naturally, I've followed Jerry's many publications for these past 20 years and have never found the time I've invested in reading his latest ideas less than incredibly worthwhile. Interestingly, I bought this book based solely on the title and my expectation that it would be full of new ideas and insights about how using metaphors in marketing tactics would influence consumer behavior. While this book does cover material related to that sort of thing, it really covers so much more. The first two chapters on thinking deeply, "Workable Wondering" and focusing on consumer similarities set the stage for how to take the insights and ideas from the next 7 chapters (one per each deep metaphor) and incorporate them into your own thinking. The last chapter ties things together and presents a number of ideas for how Deep Metaphors may influence a number of marketing strategies and tactics. This book is written to stimulate your thinking about how Deep Metaphors apply in many areas of marketing and consumer behavior. It doesn't present a list of "to dos" or lay out a plan of action that you should follow. Instead, you'll find yourself seeing what you, your consumers and your competitors do in a new light.

Getting managers thinking

Another great book from Zaltman, with more excellent insights into the way people think. I found it a more straightforward read than the excellent 'How Customers Think'. And it has an even blunter message for managers: "Start paying proper attention to how your customers really make their buying decisions, or miss out!" As a metaphor elicitation specialist I was wowed by some of the fine detail, such as the description of the relationship between deep metaphor and emotion. But if most readers focus on the high-level message - the crucial importance of deep metaphor in guiding human behaviour - I'll be absolutely delighted! If, like reviewer Dave Lakhani, you're disappointed by the book's lack of a detailed methodology for eliciting metaphors, why not check out a non-proprietary technique such as Clean Language? Though I suppose I would say that, wouldn't I... :-)

There is No Excuse Now!

The Zaltmans' new book - "Marketing Metaphoria" - says it all! Both Gerald and Lindsay Zaltman have provided us with a blueprint of understanding that is relevant to all product categories (globally!) and only needs one more "ingredient" to make it work for us - Deep Thinking! In my almost 40 years in the profession of market research and market understanding, nothing has been clearer. We have tried detailed analyses of differences, numerous segmentation schemes....and countless other methods for helping our clients target their customers. What all of us have missed was right in front of us - Deep Thinking about customers' lives, how they view their world, our world and the future. As I read "Marketing Metaphoria", I was reminded of the graceful and precise lines of simple architecture. My husband, who is an architect, has always told me that designing a building with simple lines takes a great deal more work than a more complicated design. That is what the Zaltmans have done for us. They have made it simple -- and if we don't read this book and really dive into our marketing plans with a "new approach" -- we are the ones to blame. I urge every marketing professional to read this book and sit back and just "think" about it! Patricia Mordigan Hawkins Private Consultant Phoenix, Arizona