As long as the meaning is clear to the consumer, a visual metaphor is more persuasive yet. There are two reasons for this. First, images are remembered better than words. Keep adding incidental details to verbal descriptions and soon some of the important elements are forgotten. Keep adding incidental details to images, and those extras actually enhance memory for the important elements.
The second reason visual metaphors are more persuasive than verbal metaphors is that visual information usually enters the consumer’s brain below the level of conscious awareness, avoiding mobilization of the consumer’s resistances.
The operating principle behind you using metaphors is that it helps the new idea or item feel like an old friend. Meeting new people—as well as new products and new concepts—can be absolutely stimulating. Consumers seek novelty and variety. Still, most consumers also find a special comfort in being with the familiar.
Consumer psychologists talk about “the mere exposure effect.” Shoppers tend to have more favorable attitudes toward something they’ve seen before. Southern Methodist University researchers lied to study participants in telling them the participants had seen brands previously. The people who were convinced they had seen the brands before showed the same sorts of favorable attitudes as if they actually had.
I don’t advocate lying to your customers. So instead, when introducing a new product or brand, in ads, signage, and face-to-face selling, work in phrases like, “…the same way as with the brand you’re accustomed to using…,” and “…once you do this a few times, it will be as second nature to you as what you’ve been doing up to now….”
And when it would make sense, also show them the similarity so it’s visual.
For your profitability: Sell Well: What Really Moves Your Shoppers
Click below for more:
Clock Customer Actions to Fit Time Metaphors
Introduce Unfamiliar Products Like Old Friends
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