Three-dimensional metaphorical objects in street advertising

Abstract

This paper aims at unravelling the role of metaphor in three street marketing campaign advertisements. Each advertisement is the product of a creative process involving metaphorical mappings from an urban object (shelter, bench, ramp) onto a target domain (a billboard). The study draws on two approaches from the fields of cognitive linguistics (Forceville 2009) and industrial design (Cila 2013) in order to provide a qualitative analysis of metaphor and modality in the so-called three-dimensional metaphorical objects involved in each advertisement. A new version of the interaction mode (Cila 2013: 18) is proposed as an analytical mode for those threedimensional metaphorical entities whose real-word materialisation establishes new sets of sensory-motor interactional pathways with human beings. Results show how metaphors combine to yield the desired interactive effects through different patterns of modality. The paper concludes that this combination is a key campaign asset and calls for further work on the deliberate use of metaphor in creative processes.