Regardless of who your target audience is if you want to connect, build trust, and engage, making sure your messaging is relatable should be a priority. There are all sorts of ways we can make a message relatable. One of the more popular tools employed is the humble metaphor.
A recently published study of people's intention to sustainably dispose of old batteries (i.e. putting them in dedicated bins) in Italy highlights just how effective metaphors can be.
Let's take two messages. Both explain how much pollution batteries can cause, but one uses numbers to quantify the scale and the other uses metaphors.
Here is the number-based message:
“Consider the fact that a battery contains approximately one gram of mercury, an amount that can pollute a quantity of water equivalent to 1.000 litres. Given the fact that in Italy, few batteries are disposed of sustainably, we risk polluting approximately 354.000.000 litres of water every year.”
Here is the metaphor-based message:
“Consider the fact that a battery contains approximately one gram of mercury, an amount that can pollute a quantity of water equivalent to 7 bathtubs. Given the fact that in Italy, few batteries are disposed of sustainably, we risk polluting the equivalent of 140 Olympic swimming pools every year.”
Which message do you think you would remember most? The number-based one or the metaphor-based one?
If you said the metaphor-based message, you're not alone. In the study, those who saw the metaphor-based message weren't just more likely to recall the information; their willingness to actually dispose of batteries sustainability was higher than for those who saw the number-based message.
Of course, other factors can influence how likely someone is or isn't going to dispose of their old batteries sustainably - proximity to a disposal facility being one of the big ones. Even when taking proximity into account, the study found people were more likely to dispose of their old batteries with the metaphorical message than the number-based one.
If you fancy reading the science, it is open access:
Acuti, D., Lemarié, L., & Viglia, G. (2023). How to enhance the sustainable disposal of harmful products. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 186, 122151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2022.122151