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In other words, drinking the product is presented metaphorically in terms of replenishing the
persons energy. In terms of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, the drink LUCOZADE is the target
domain, which is presented in terms of the RE-FUELLING source domain. The positive prop-
erties of re-fuelling mentioned above, such as re-energising and invigorating, are mapped
onto the product. Semino further argues that the use of the fuelling metaphor to present
the properties of the drink may be seen as humorous, especially because the ad appears in a
UK motorway service station, and, consequently, the metaphor is situationally relevant. The
combination of metaphor and humour might make it more likely that viewers will find the
ad appealing, and respond to it by buying the product (Semino 2008: 175).
A further important point regarding the persuasive potential of advertising concerns the
nature of creativity and novelty. In commercial advertising, novel metaphors that involve
creative realisations of conventional conceptual metaphors seem to be more effective for
persuasive purposes than novel metaphors that involve totally original sourcetarget map-
pings (Burgers et al. 2015). While totally novel metaphors are typically attention-grabbing,
they do not necessarily have more of an effect on the audience than conventional metaphors
(Burgers et al. 2015). The distinction between novel and conventional metaphors is dis-
cussed in Chapters 14 and 15. Here, it suffices to say that conventional metaphors are those
which make use of pairings between source and target domains/concepts which are well
known and familiar in a society or community of speakers (Lakoff and Johnson 1980).
Conventional metaphors tend to be exploited in commercial advertising because, as a
genre, commercial advertising, on the whole, appears to aim to maintain and reinforce the
status quo and shared assumptions about reality, rather than to challenge or disrupt such
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scholars (Semino 2008). Discourse-pragmatic studies have had a great influence on the
study of the role of metaphor in communication and its relation to persuasion. According to
Charteris-Black,
what a pragmatic perspective on metaphor does is to take metaphor back to its origin in
the branch of philosophy known as rhetoric remembering that for Aristotle, rhetoric
meant a theory of argumentation as well as a theory of composition and style. (2004: 10)
Charteris-Black adds that a pragmatic view [of metaphor] argues that speakers use meta-
phor to persuade by combining the cognitive and linguistic resources at their disposal and
that metaphor is effective in realising the speakers underlying goals of persuading the
hearer because of its potential for moving us (2004: 11). More specifically, [a] metaphor
is an incongruous linguistic representation that has the underlying purpose of influencing
opinions and judgements by persuasion; this purpose is often covert and reflects speaker
intentions within particular contexts of use (Charteris-Black 2004: 21). The incongruity
mentioned by Charteris-Black can be explained in terms of the concept of solving a puz-
zle when facing a metaphor. Thus, although the Lucozade advertisement discussed in the
introduction relies on a conventional conceptual metaphor, it involves the hybrid image of
a re-fuelling pump made out of orange bubbles. The potential consumer therefore needs to
solve the apparent incongruity between the shape and substance represented in the image, in
order to achieve a coherent interpretation of the advertisement.
Metaphor is a crucial instrument for persuasion because it can involve both cognition and
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L. Hidalgo-Downing and B. Kraljevic-Mujic
(Phillips and McQuarrie 2004, Forceville 2012). Burgers et al. argue that these studies
unequivocally demonstrate that novel metaphors are most persuasive when they are moder-
ately complex; when the metaphoric comparison is too complex, readers get frustrated and
do not appreciate the metaphor (2015: 516). Additionally, with regard to the position of
the metaphor in the text, some studies have shown that metaphor has a greater persuasive
potential when it appears at the onset of related arguments, or is semantically congruent
with other metaphorical statements contained in the communication and thus helps organise
and encode the message (Ottati and Renstrom 2010).
The influence of other factors on the audience has also been discussed, such as the perfor-
mance factor in audiovisual mediums such as TV. Caballero (2014) combines a qualitative
analysis of how non-verbal modes enhance the verbal mode and interact in the metaphorical
construction of TV advertisements with an experimental study of responses by 60 subjects
regarding the perceived difficulty of and interest in the advertisements. Caballero analyses
four advertisements: one in which the tennis player Nadal strikes a ball while a Kia car is
shown running at top speed; a second one in which a wine product is metaphorically rep-
resented by means of a fatherson metaphor (i.e. the wine producer is the father and the
product is the son); a third one in which two computer companies, a Mac and a PC, are
personified as two young men; and a fourth ad in which Freixenet cava is metaphorically
represented multimodally by means of visual images of fizzing bubbles and the sound of a
zapateado or Spanish Flamenco dance. Caballero argues that it is not only the multimodal
metaphors which have a creative and persuasive effect, but that there is a performative
dimension which enhances the creativity and persuasiveness of the ads. Nadal is acting out
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Metaphor and persuasion in advertising
controversial ad was part of the companys Ice-cream is our religion campaign, claiming
that their decision to use religious imagery stemmed from their strong feelings towards their
product and also from their wish to comment on and question shared assumptions, using
satire and gentle humour (Sweney 2010). Metaphors with religion and politics as source
domains are used frequently in present-day commercial advertising as a persuasive strategy
which draws on familiar areas of shared knowledge in our society (Koller 2009a).
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(1) Weve found the way to reach for new heights. (Huawei)
(2) Just like friends who help each other to reach for the sky. Huawei can do the same for
your business. [...] Proof that with good collaboration, the sky is the limit. (Huawei)
The consumer is positioned as able to reach for new heights and to reach for the sky with
the help of the advertised company. This upward movement towards new heights and the
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sky tends to be associated with ambition and success, represented through the conventional
orientational metaphors HIGH STATUS IS UP, POWERFUL IS UP and most generally, GOOD IS UP
(Lakoff and Johnson 1980). The conventional conceptual metaphor POWERFUL IS UP is seen
as resulting from embodied primary metaphors (Grady 1997), in the interaction of children
with taller persons and caregivers. These spatial metaphors are formed in early childhood
through the experience of children moving their body through space and interacting with
objects and other people (Koller, 2009a:120). As argued in the study of ICT metaphor varia-
tion across time, the present advertisement illustrates the re-contextualisation of the JOURNEY
and WAR metaphors as focusing respectively on MOTION rather than on REACHING A DESTINATION,
and on AMBITION as COLLABORATION instead of WAR.
In a second study on both print and internet ads, Hidalgo-Downing and Kraljevic-Mujic
(2015) discuss the similarities and differences in the use of metaphor in these two genres,
focusing on the activation of background knowledge and positive evaluation of the products
by means of non-verbal modes. One of the ads analysed is a 1.32-minute-long YouTube
Coca-Cola ad with the title Fairy tale in a vending machine, produced in The Netherlands
in 2006 (Television commercial, 2006). The ad exploits the themes of fantasy and magic,
while multimodal metaphors are based on the interaction of visual (an ideal fantasy world)
and aural triggers (a jingle). There are no verbal forms of expression in the construction of
meaning, and the music is particularly important. The ad starts with an everyday scene of a
young man who wants to buy a bottle of Coca-Cola from a street vending machine. He inserts
a coin in the vending machine. Inside the vending machine, the coin reaches the fantasy world
where the bottle is filled with the advertised product. At that moment, the Coca-Cola jingle
Future directions
Further research is needed on the way socio-cultural factors may affect peoples compre-
hension of ads and emotional responses to ads. This involves all the main theoretical areas
discussed above: metaphor in commercial advertising within cognitive, discourse analytic
and critical discourse perspectives, as well as reception studies. In a society which changes so
fast, it is necessary to have further diachronic studies on how metaphors have changed over
time in the representation of products and services in commercial advertising. Similarly, the
tendency towards globalization, together with the need to appeal to specific cultural values,
makes it necessary to explore in greater depth the nature of the universality or tendency to
vary of different types of metaphors and their persuasive potential in commercial advertising
across cultures. The study of the reception and interpretation of metaphor and its influence
on persuasion in commercial advertising is a particularly promising field of research. This
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L. Hidalgo-Downing and B. Kraljevic-Mujic
applies to research that focuses on the factors that determine how choice of metaphor influ-
ences different consumers interpretation and reception of ads, according to age, interests,
social background, etc. and how this may influence their decisions on buying products.
A further promising line of research concerns the function and nature of multimodal
metaphor as a persuasive strategy in new online settings, such as YouTube and other digital
and virtual spaces. In these settings, there tends to be a deliberate blurring of the boundaries
of genre types, in such a way that on some occasions it is not clear whether a YouTube
recording is a commercial advertisement or it belongs to another genre. An example of this
is the YouTube Oreo advertisement in which the protagonists are members of a music band
(YouTubers ads 2014). The recording is performed in such a way that, as pointed out by
consumers associations, the persuasive commercial intention of the Oreo advertisement is
disguised in the form of a promotional video of a music band.
Finally, an interesting future direction is the creation of further pedagogical books for
students and scholars in order to study the current nature of commercial advertising and the
metaphorical persuasive strategies which are arising in the new virtual commercial adver-
tising genres. A particularly important aspect of this is the development of an awareness
of the critical and ethical dimensions of metaphor as a persuasive strategy in commercial
advertising. Specific social groups, such as children and young people, are particularly
vulnerable as potential target audiences of advertisements which make use of metaphor
as a soft-sell persuasive strategy. This makes it necessary to work in educational contexts
on the development of an awareness of the power of metaphor in commercial advertising.
Commercial advertising can be studied as a genre in secondary schools and in university
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