Conquest taps into metaphors to measure brand emotion

UK-- Conquest Research has developed a new way to measure emotional reactions to brands, by tapping into the metaphors we use to describe and express feelings.

The London-based firm's new Metaphorix tool builds on co-founder David Penn's recent work on cognitive linguistics, which he presented at this year's Esomar Congress. It will be incorporated into the firm's existing work on brand health tracking, advertising, and product and packaging development.

“It's a way of getting people to explain their emotions without having to verbalise,” Penn told Research. “There are certain emotions and certain metaphorical representations that are part of our neural circuitry.”

Penn says that feelings become conflated in our minds with metaphors – for example ‘warmth' represents ‘affection'. Researchers can use such metaphors as a fast track to the immediate emotional response, avoiding more rationalised responses.

Using online surveys, Metaphorix asks respondents to describe their feelings through visual and spatial representations of emotions, which can then be quantitatively analysed.

“As well as all the classic stuff you measure when you're doing NPD, we're trying to measure whether people feel excited about the idea,” said Penn. “Rather than just a standard semantic scale where you ask them how much they like it and if they'd buy it,” he said.

Author: Robert Bain

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