Purple Cow. Duct Tape Marketing. Blue Ocean Strategy.
Recognize the names of those books?
Is any one of them actually about cows, tape, or the ocean?
Not even remotely. Those titles use metaphor to describe different marketing strategies, ideas, and techniques in a way that we can instantly recognize and understand (a purple cow stands out, duct tape is useful, and a big blue ocean is deep and wide).
Metaphors and their cousins similes are linguistic dance steps that take the lead for our audiences in a quickstep of understanding. (<– That’s a metaphor, by …