Effectiveness of visual metaphor in milk advertising

Abstract

In prevailing competition-based market economy, there is a need for marketing communication to be effective in order to retain customers and attract the new ones. One of the most popular modes of marketing communication – advertising, now has to find ways to be attention grabbing and persuading among the enormous amounts of advertisements. Therefore, creativity becomes crucially important. Using metaphors, which cause consumers to understand one or some elements of the advertisement in terms of another, is the possible technique to make an advertisement creative. Moreover, as visual elements of the advertisement are considered as more attention grabbing than the verbal ones, the assumption can be made that the usage of visual metaphors in advertising is the method leading into the effectiveness of advertising. Nevertheless, subtleties such as product category may have the impact on the consumers’ associations with the brand developed through advertising with visual metaphors and perceived value of the product; and the question rises whether this impact is positive or negative. The aim of this research is to determine the impact of visual metaphors on the effectiveness of milk advertising. The analysis of the research results reveals the specific aspects of consumer response to milk advertising, which are influenced by the application of visual metaphors and whether that aspects of consumer response to milk advertising are influenced positively or negatively. As a research result, authors provide guidelines for creating effective milk advertising campaigns.