Metaphors are much more tenacious than facts.

—Paul de Man

I've been working on this new edition of this book for weeks. Which means that I'm watching a lot of Netflix.

I also selected the thickest book I could find from my stash of to-be-read books. It's a good-sized collection, those books. I imagine their hopeful hearts lift a little when I come near, maybe today being the day they'll be cracked open like a walnut, devoured.

The thickest book on the shelf was Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris. It's 576 pages. Perfect. This should take a while.

But within a few pages, David mentions that someone's hair is rough-cut, “as if with a steak knife.” Then he peels a shrimp the size of an old-fashioned telephone handset.

Ugh. I'm trying to procrastinate the writing of a chapter on analogies and metaphors. And yet here they are. And they're glorious.

I can't not think about metaphors now.

Dammit.

* * *

Analogies help make big concepts smaller and more human-sized. Metaphors and similes are types of analogies, but they all have the same job description:

• Make confusing ideas more accessible.
• Put numbers or data in context.
• Make the abstract concrete.
• Add color and voice in a spare but powerful (and sometimes poetic) way.
• Make your ideas memorable.

In Marketing, analogies pack a lot in a tiny overhead bin space. (Another metaphor.)

They can help us explain convoluted ideas or applications more simply. They can help our audiences understand what we do or what we sell.

And (importantly!) analogies can help us be more memorable.

* * *

Here are a few ways to make your analogies stronger, unforgettable, more delightful.

• Roll your own. Busy as a bee. Like a needle in a haystack. Happy as a clam. These are expressions familiar to most of us.

  If this were a quiz show and I dangled a 50-dollar bill in your face, you could probably name 10 more analogies straight off the top of your noggin:

  Dead as a doornail. Light as a feather. Heart of gold. Key to success. You call me up again just to break me like a promise / So casually cruel in the name of being honest.

  Oops. That last one is actually a Taylor Swift lyric. But also … analogy! (If Analogy held elections, T-Swift would be voted in as President for Life.)

  Challenge yourself to come up with analogies that aren't obvious comparisons or clichés.

  How?

  Gather your belongings and proceed to the next bullet, please.

• Write an image. You might say you've acquired 842 new accounts in Europe last year.

  Better is to put that into context: If you invited representatives from all of your new accounts to join you in Europe, they'd pack to capacity all the cars in the London Eye.

  Remember the example from Chapter 17 that referenced a literacy stat by the U.S. Department of Education? The one that said 30 million adults struggle with reading?

  Whoa, 30 million! That sounds like a lot.

  But … well, is it?

  Thirty million is about 12% of the U.S. population (that helps) or slightly more than the total population of Texas. (Much better.)

• Consider context. One way to spark less-obvious comparisons is to look at context. Location, industry, topic … all fair game.

  Driving from Indianapolis to St. Louis, David Sedaris writes: “Tim's SUV was the size of a Conestoga wagon, an association that made the land seem even flatter than it was.”

  Beautiful, that analogy. It conjures up prairies, settlers, westward migration—the Conestoga covered wagon being the Airstream camper of its day.

  Would that comparison have worked were David being driven across Romania or Beirut?

  Not as well. You need the SUV to be in the Midwest to make “Conestoga” really land.

• Create an element of surprise. Instead of reaching for a well-worn metaphor, find the connection between two familiar but otherwise disconnected things.

  Your job is to explain, sure. But also delight with fresh, unexpected connections.

  Instead of: The leaves of the giant pumpkin plant are huge.

  Better: The leaves are the size of trash can lids, shading gourds the size of beer kegs.

  Why this works: “Huge” is too vague. (Huge like what?) “Trash cans” and “beer kegs” are familiar objects but also just weird enough in a gardening context.

• Extended the metaphor. If you compare giant pumpkins to beer kegs, work in language that extends the metaphor. Maybe you watch the gardener give the plant a “shot” of fertilizer, like a bartender might serve up a shot glass of Wild Turkey.

  Don't overdo it—too many will start to feel heavy-handed and overwritten. But a related callback or two can ground a metaphor.

  As in: Fourteen percent of us believe robots will eventually rule the world—that's the entire population of the state of Texas, with a few counties in Oklahoma roped in.

  Why this works: “Roped in” invokes cattle, the Southwest, Texas, Oklahoma. The analogy is stronger for it.

• Signal belonging. “As big as four football fields” is an okay way to describe something big. It's not very inventive—but at least it's more descriptive than a vague “huge” or “gargantuan.”

  Yet if you're speaking to a Midwest audience (or if Green Bay is in the Super Bowl), then get more specific: “As big as four Lambeau Fields, laid end-zone to end-zone.” Name names (Chapter 20.)

  Think: What would delight your specific audience? What analogy might signal “We get you. You belong here.”?

* * *

A Meatier Metaphor

“Net neutrality” suffers from terrible branding.

The name is boring, techy, faceless. It sounds like something to ignore, especially at a time when we are flooded by the always-on spigot of distressing news.

We tote around limited gallons of rage to pour onto social media. We have to protect our mental health and well-being. It's exhausting to worry and wail about everything, isn't it?

Network (or net) neutrality is the principle that Internet service providers must treat all internet communications equally; they can't discriminate or charge differently based on location, content, platform, destination address, and so on. In the United States, the issue resurfaces periodically as a point of contention between network users and service providers.

Sure—the concept of net neutrality is important. It affects nearly everyone. But it's too … big. Unwieldy. Too much. Too hard. Between the Supreme Court and foreign policy and the ice caps … it gets shoved to the back of the line.

That's party because the concept of net neutrality is intangible. Consider the powerful image of a face mask, for example. That's a tangible restriction, whereas the restrictions at the heart of net neutrality feel … I can't even think of a word to describe them. (That's how much it lacks impact.)

The argument needs a good metaphor.

Enter Burger King.

In a recent campaign, Burger King uses its signature Whopper sandwich to raise awareness about net neutrality.¹

The setup goes like this: The scene opens in a Burger King restaurant during a busy lunchtime. Customers are standing around for their orders, getting annoyed. It turns out that the wait for Whoppers is absurdly long, Burger King customers are told, unless they pay a premium ($26) to get it fast.

Or! Burger King employees tell confused customers: You could get the chicken sandwich or chicken fries immediately! BK is fast-tracking the chicken.

No one wants the chicken. That's not what they came here for. You sense the customers suddenly super-sizing their outrage.

The bigger story, of course, is what repealing net neutrality could mean for all of us, everywhere. We want the Whopper, but our ISPs are telling us to take the chicken.

Observe the faces of the people who are told they need to pay five times the regular price for a Whopper. Consider the ridiculousness of throttling back delivery times based on an arbitrary restriction.

Revel in the power of a meaty metaphor. If we get this pissed over lunch, can you imagine what might happen when more is at stake?

“Net neutrality repealed: I sleep,” one YouTube commenter said. “Whopper neutrality repealed: eyes wide open.”

“The Whopper actually taught me about net neutrality,” one customer says in the video, his face slightly contorted. “Stupid. But true.”

One more thing: A commentary on net neutrality by a fast-food restaurant seems odd.

Maybe so. But when you think about it, you can see how it makes total sense.

A fast-food company commenting on so-called fast and slow access lanes? It's actually perfect.