A lot of people believe that there is too much advertising, that it makes us a herd of capitalistic robots, that it consolidates on stereotypes, that it plays on our fears of not being socially tolerable, that it seldom speaks the truth, abuses the ignorance of innocent children, and by and large corrupts the social order. Despite the fact that most of these criticisms are scathing and spoke in a manner of seethe, there is some truth to some of them after all.

Although metaphors are used by advertising creators to convey brand meaning and enhance brand information processing, little is understood with regard to consumers’ comprehension of intended meaning. This research contributes to this body of knowledge by examining the effect ofmetaphor type and hemispheric processing on respondents’ grasp of metaphors in ads. Overall, the findings propose that concrete metaphors are more easily understood than conceptual metaphors.

Metaphors are the transcendence of human understanding from the abstract to the real. Cognitive theory, besides the views on ontological and structural metaphors don’t only aid exploring time metaphors and brand metaphors, but also metaphors of other intangible concepts by grouping them into the dimensions of space or the dimensions of human experiences, so that the intangible nor longer remains elusive.

Metaphors, when presented as an aesthetic form, result in an active and unified apprehension of knowledge. Such knowledge is made up of more than facts and information; it is an affective state that simultaneously invokes cognition and produces a crucial sensory response. Thus, metaphor as consternation of knowledge induces a state of consciousness that produces a physical reaction that creates feeling. Metaphor translates an experienced reality into a perceptible object that has emotive import as well as discursive content, and neither quality is separable from the creative imagination and affective response that produced the object.

This effect is moderated by hemispheric processing such that individuals high in right or integrative processing are more likely to provide valid interpretations of both types of metaphors. These findings are discussed and implications for advertising practitioners are offered.

Every marketer and every advertiser today wants to know what their consumer thinks and how she thinks what she thinks. My thesis would be an attempt to answer at least part of this question regarding cognition and visual perception with respect to the different cultural zones within India. We speak about a united India and unity within diversity; clichéd terms, yet do they really hold ground when one talks about effects of cultural differences on how one perceives and views the world.

Cognition by experts is described as “awareness, one of the three aspects of the mind, the others being affection (feeling or emotion), and conation (willing or desiring). They may work as a whole, but any one may dominate any mental process.”1 With this working definition of cognition one assumes that this is the desired trajectory for any marketer to want from their consumer, with respect to their brand. Another point in question would be – Do metaphors vary from place to place, are our common Indian myths the same universal truths that we hold them to be or is there cognitive dissonance prevalent amongst the cultural zones within India. Visual metaphors in advertising are used to persuade the observer and hence if they mean different things to different people, understanding perception here becomes important.

‘Perception is unavoidably selective, we can’t see all there is to see. There are of course physiological limits and some argue that there are limits to cognitive capacity. And then there are the constraints of our locational viewpoint: we can’t see things from every angle at once. But in addition to such physical limits we focus on salient features and ignore details which are irrelevant to our current purposes or interests. Selectivity thus involves omission. Some commentators use the ‘filter’ metaphor – we ‘filter out’ data, but this suggests a certain passivity and some others talk of ‘seeking out’ data of a certain kind.’

Every individual thus is conditioned by his or her culture and through my research I want to understand the level of this conditioning and its impact on visual perception and cognition and variations within the cultural zones.

Both the objectivity of physical phenomena and the subjectivity of human sentience are fused through an act of immanent apprehension. In short, metaphor has meaning that goes beyond, and is not reducible to, either rational discourse or emotive utterance.The inherent characteristics of metaphors as artful deviations with imagery and decorative properties can be capitalized on to enhance the personality of products that lack such characteristics.

For millions of years, ever since human history has evolved, the world has taken recourse to the usage of visual or verbal metaphors to convey a myriad of topics such from language to philosophy.The fact of the matter is that metahors make life easier. The world thinks differently but is ultimately bound by a singular thought process-cipher and deciphers information within metaphors or analogies.

The central principle guiding campaign communiction and most business communication today is conceptualising the entire structure of communication.Whether it be routine communication by the corporate/government entity/person/people or a major communication project now matter how large or minor, it’s best to conceptualise what best works for the campaign.

The real advantages of conceptualizing communication structure in terms of the metaphor of the campaign are best demonstrated when an organization or any entity is facing no reall challenges either in terms of survival or thriving.A campaign, hence , in terms of a metaphor cn be used for either or both of the following purposes: 1) Inform 2) Persuade.

RESEARCH PROBLEM:

Till date, no concrete study has been done on the perils or pros of using a metaphor to depict a scenario or imagination and hence there is really no in-depth understanding.None of the research until now shows how a metaphorical statement is a more effective means of claiming possession of some particular attribute relative to a nonmetaphorical expression; more generally, it has not been shown that exposure to metaphors in the context of advertising can produce a change in the degree to which a specific belief is held. In fact, the nature of the research designs used, which pretest for semantic equivalence with respect to a specific attribute, make it impossible to show that a metaphorical expression can be an effective means of altering belief that the advertised object possesses the claimed attribute.

In the paper titled “Cultural Metaphors as Frames of Reference for Nations by MARTIN J. GANNON, EDWIN A. LOCKE, AMIT GUPTA,PINO AUDIA, AND AMY L. KRISTOF-BROWN, a passage explains that “there is only one well-known empirical study advancing and testing the validity of cultural metaphors—Clifford Geertz’ (1973) study of 500 Balinese cockfights as mirroring or representing Balinese culture. It is particularly difficult to test the validity of cultural metaphors. The methodology for doing so is inductive and grounded on close observation and analysis to derive emic dimensions suitable for testing (Gannon and Audia 2000; Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss and Corbin 1990). Also, as explained, to test the validity of several cultural metaphors, it is not feasible to use only one general questionnaire, as is the practice when etic issues are explored and profiles of national cultures are developed. Using only one questionnaire automatically excludes emic dimensions.”

An Emic is defined as “behavior or a belief in terms meaningful (consciously or unconsciously) to the actor; that is, an emic account comes from a person within the culture. Almost anything from within a culture can provide an emic account.”At the same time, an Etic is defined as the “observer”-as the person who gives the accounts of the events as he percieves them to be.

In addition, it is not known whether the power of a metaphorical figure lies in its metaphoricity or its figurativeness (i.e., artful deviation), or both. All of these are important questions, certainly for theory, but also for the practitioners who must decide what kind of metaphors to include in ads to shift consumer beliefs in the desired direction. Every marketer is trying to think of that elusive way to tap on to the pulse of the thought process of the consumer.

Not just metaphors, the essence of every figure of speech used in every day ad-parlance needs to be examined closely and documented for our ability to understand the emotions people attach to culture symbols and archetypes.Print ads are most susceptible to use figures of speech as informative ads are copy intensive and getting the point across most effectively requires the clever usage of figures of speech in not just visual terms but also literary terms.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE:

Development communication is a booming sector in the area of marketing and communication and one of the best ways to understand the effectiveness of such communication is by analysing the different campaigns deployed by social institutions, PSUs, NGOs etc. and analyse the imapact of such communication on the intended audience.

This study is undertaken with the purpose of understanding, analysing and evaluating the different advertisement campaigns-their effectiveness, appeal and other such parameters published by the Government of Gujarat. This thesis would be to try and decode the thinking process the advertisers and campaigners and understand the knack of creating succesful metaphorical depictions.It will also try to research and demonstrate these figures of speeches and analogies from literature into every day usage in advertising specifically for print ads and from a metaphorical perspective.

Following are the major research objectives:

Analysing the design, semiotics, code switching etc and symbolism. used in advertisements that give out subliminal messages, and understanding viewer response to these

Using cognitive neurology and primary research to find out the reasons behind the behaviour of the viewers/readers.

Understanding the impa