Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EMMA (European Multimodal Metaphor in Advertising)
Reporting period: 2015-10-05 to 2017-10-04
Our key findings are that the presence of metaphor, irony and hyperbole in advertisements increases their appeal; multilayered metaphors are particularly effective in conveying complex messages and are understood more quickly than single layered metaphors; and responses vary significantly according to the viewer’s nationality. If advertisers, charities and NGOs are sensitive to, linguistic and cultural differences in people’s responses to figurative messaging in metaphors, local and international communities are more likely to benefit from specific, appropriate and ethical advertising.
Our project comprised five stages. We first selected appropriate advertisements from the UK, China and Spain to analyse in detail the types of figurative language used. We then collected data from 90 participants (30 from each country) on speed of understanding, as well as perceived appeal, moment-by-moment measures to identify the positivity and perceived intensity of an induced emotion, and post-hoc, semi-structured interviews to ascertain participants’ perceptions of each advertisement. Data collection took place in Birmingham (UK), in Logroño (Spain), and Ningbo (China). We then conducted a quantitative analysis to establish the relationships between figurative language used, the number, nature and complexity of interpretations, the speed of comprehension and appeal of the advertisements, as well as the degree of cross-cultural variation. In the subsequent qualitative analysis of the interview data, we investigated the number, nature and complexity of the interpretations provided by the participants from the three different nationalities to establish the variation in the interpretation of the advert and the understanding of the product and associated attributes.
We have disseminated our results to a wide range of different audiences and nationalities. Academically, we have presented our work at our partner institution (the Metaphor Lab, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands) as well as at other academic institutions such as Lund University (Sweden), Nottingham-Ningbo University (China), and Rice University (Houston), and at the Open University Hong Kong. During the fellowship, we have published two peer-reviewed research articles, two book chapters, and a research monograph with John Benjamins. We have another book under contract for 2020 with Cambridge UP, and four research articles currently under review.
We have also organised our own hands-on workshops within larger events geared towards a general audience, such as the British Science Week in the UK in 2016 and 2017, the European Researchers Night 2017 in Brussels (Belgium), Pint of Science 2016 (Spain), and have also participated in the International Day of Women and Girls in Science in 2017. We have organised two specific workshops for professionals (“Examining Language in Business” and “Everyday Creativity in Communication”) that have raised the awareness of advertisers to the potential of conscious implementation of figurative language in their campaigns. We have consulted and collaborated with several local SMEs that have shown interest in our project, such as Big Cat Advertising and Creativity (Birmingham and London, UK), Roopra Medical (Birmingham, UK), and Creative Semiotics (London, UK). We are currently expanding our professional network, with specific funding to enhance the impact of the fellowship among professionals working in the field of advertising.
We have disseminated our findings to people working in the field of advertising and marketing through training events and online materials (publicly accessible on the project’s website), detailing examples of good practice and possible pitfalls regarding the use of figurative language in advertising campaigns that are designed to target a multicultural audience. Our training materials can be incorporated into PR and social media strategies in order to increase their appeal to a range of diverse audiences, and to avoid unexpected interpretations from consumers from different countries (in particular, from UK, Spain, China, and Hong Kong). Our findings are also useful for advertisers wishing to use figurative language in a conscious way, in order to anticipate, for example, the potential processing time needed by viewers. This is important when viewers tend to have limited viewing time, e.g. when driving past billboards or browsing webpages with banner adverts. Likewise, our results have the potential to help advertisers get a clearer idea about the types of figurative language that evoke emotion and better engage the viewer, thus leading to positive product evaluation by potential consumers, and to adverts becoming viral.
Work on this project has been granted a number of awards, including the “Prize for Outstanding Dissertation” (University of La Rioja, Spain, 2017; this prize also takes into account the research of Paula Pérez-Sobrino during the Marie Curie fellowship); the “Young Researchers’ Award” at the 2nd International Conference on Figurative Thought and Language (University of Pavia, Italy, 2016); and a travel and subsistence bursary to present project findings at Rice University (Houston, USA, 2016). The research fellow was also a finalist in the category “Best Science Communicator” in the Marie Curie Prizes 2017.