Note: Blog entries before 1 September 2010 have been archived.
If you watch any TV at all, you have undoubtedly seen ads for Ciallis, the wonder drug for “erectile dysfunction.” And while you may be wondering if your (or his) erection might actually last for 4 hours, I’m wondering if you have noticed the metaphors being used in the commercials. Walls come down. The waters flow. The beams and chimneys are erect and standing tall. The couple goes happily into nature. And then … and then they end up in separate bathtubs.
Most of the metaphors are fairly obvious, even for those who haven’t had much experience bridging concepts from metaphor to experience. The metaphor of “walls” between people has been common since the late 1960s or early ’70s, and both “wetness” and “chimneys” are fairly obvious for anyone with direct experience or some acquaintance with literature (Robert Browning and D. H. Lawrence come to mind). The lush undergrowth of the natural setting is another fairly obvious metaphor. The meaning of the separate bathtubs, however, isn’t really clear. My guess—and it is just a guess—is that the image is supposed to evoke postcoital bliss, but it is possible that those who wrote the ad were more sophisticated than that. They may have intended to create curiosity in viewers. I know that I have been curious since the ads first began appearing, and perhaps you have been as well.
One of the things about metaphors is that often the most powerful metaphors for influencing behavior are those that remain below the level of conscious awareness. The principal metaphor of Herman Melville’s classic work, Moby-Dick, for example, is that the “Great White Whale” represents God. Ahab and crew represent man’s foolish effort to connect with a god who goes crashing about the planet disdaining and destroying humans. That isn’t explicit in the novel. In explaining the metaphor, however, Melville, told Nathanial Hawthorne (author of The Scarlet Letter and other novels) that he (Melville) had written a “wicked book.”
While I can’t imagine that the creators of the Ciallis ads are nearly so clever as either Melville or Hawthorne, it is likely that they did their “homework” and fully understood the effectiveness of metaphor in the persuasive process. What if all advertisers were that clever in their use of metaphors that remained below your level of unconscious awareness. What—exactly—are the “hidden persuaders” (see Vance Packard’s classic work on advertising, The Hidden Persuaders).
The next time you are watching TV and a commercial comes on, pay attention to the metaphors, whether visual (images, such as the erect chimneys or the big rocks in truck ads), auditory (stories and music), and kinesthetic (“mood” advertising is popular these days, but also stuff that, if you are the type who associates in, smell and taste, as in food ads). Your awareness of how metaphors are being used will help you decide on a conscious level whether you want to “buy into” what the ad is selling. Otherwise, you may end up in a separate bathtub….
