Question

One of the action steps you can take in enlisting others is to appeal to a common vision includes sharing "metaphors, symbols, examples, stories, pictures, and words that represent the image of what you all aspire to become." What is the practical implication of that action step? How have you seen this displayed in your professional or educational experience?

Answer 1

I have successfully used most of above in achieving organizational objectives and goals as follows:

Metaphors are used in the marketing of the company’s products since we are selling top-end apparel and are well-known apparel brand we use metaphors to make customers feel special if they use our products, “Our new summer collection will make you feel like a model”. The metaphor is stating that wearing our range of products will elevate you to the position of a model. The customer already starts aspiring to look like a model.

Symbols are used to convey emotions and enhance the text, like bullets, are used to highlight the USP of the brand. For example:

• Value for money
• Great fabric
• Vibrant colors

The bullets will make the words stand out and become highlighted. The reader's eyes will directly go to the bullets. This is used in marketing presentations frequently to enhance the words.

Examples are frequently used to highlight success stories and aggressively promote an idea. We quote the example of our marketing team achieving a target because of following a strategy and we encourage other team members to follow the example by quoting the example.

Stories especially success and failure stories are used regularly at our monthly review meets to show what team has worked properly, how other brands are strategizing and gaining a competitive advantage. The stories are used to motivate the team to perform better and to inspire them from success stories. These add a positive spark and create a competitive spirit.

Pictures are aggressively used in all presentations in the form of graphs to share the performance charts, pie charts to show the market share. The pictures of the advertising plan, creatives, brand ambassadors images etc are used to convey the desired message. The pictures are the best way to convey a message as it creates an immediate impact. The numbers in tabular form will take a long time to understand but a pie chart or a graph will immediately register in the mind of the reader. The decision can be quickly made and the overall message will be conveyed crisply and precisely without any confusion.

Words especially powerful words are used by all marketing team to convey their strategies and how they are better than competition strategies. Marketing team uses words to forcefully present the company and the benefits of its products. The marketing further develops an adverting strategy using the special tagline and creates a whole marketing plan around the tagline and vision.

To conclude the objectives and goals of a marketing team uses metaphors, symbols, examples, stories, pictures, and word beautifully to create a marketing strategy and to define their success formula in achieving various objectives.