METAPHOR MINUTE ARCHIVE
Metaphor Minute: Bait Your Blog
April 30,
2010
Bait
Your Blog
My latest blog uses a recent experience at the Ritz Carlton as a metaphor to draw readers into an article on service. Metaphors are excellent launching pads for the information and points you share on your blog. Mary Anne Doggett, Managing Partner of InterActive Communications Inc., consultants to the financial services industry offers an excellent example of metaphor as hook in a recent blog of hers.
Snow and a Sled
I remember being a kid after a big snowfall, trudging up a hill,
up to my knees in white fluff, dragging my flexible flyer sled.
I always needed a shove to get traction and to conquer my fear
of the first run. After that I was happily making a running
start myself and flying with the wind.
It might just be me, but I see lots of senior executives still
at the top of the mountain. The snow has fallen. They have made
the difficult trudge up the mountain. And yet they are still
waiting to make any decisions to move forward. Afraid perhaps of
an Olympic crash? It is hard to tell. A small handful have gone
ahead. For the rest the snow is beginning to melt and they might
never get to ride like the wind.
Moving forward takes a leap of faith and sometimes a shove from
behind. Moving forward requires spending money and making
investments. They are still waiting for some sign of safety. So
they are standing in place.
What will it take to see that making the investment now is the
only way to see how far you can go?
Take Away Anne
Miller Goldman Sachs Pummeled
by Metaphors.
Want people to read your blog? Begin with a
story metaphor to engage your reader and then link that story
seamlessly to your main point.
See you next month!.
Make What You Say, Pay — With Metaphors.
Last year, Matt Taibbi of "Rolling Stone"
famously called Goldman Sachs the "great vampire squid wrapped
around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood
funnel into anything that smells like money."
This week’s cover story of THE WEEK's is "Here Come the Cops:
Cracking Down on Wall Street's Shell Games" and features a
cartoon Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s CEO, raking in dough playing
a shell game.
At the SEC hearings this week, Senator Mark Pryor said, "People
feel like you [GS] are betting with other people's money and
other people’s future. Instead of Wall Street, it looks like Las
Vegas."
Disagreeing with the choice of metaphor, but not with the spirit
of it, Senator Ensign said, "...that in Las Vegas, the casinos
do not manipulate the odds while you are playing the game. The
better analogy, would be to someone playing a slot machine while
the 'guys on Wall Street' were 'tweaking the odds' in their
favor."
Blankfein and colleagues stayed totally left-brained and held
their ground saying they had done nothing wrong. A PR loss for
their side that they couldn't come up with a metaphor or analogy
to counter the many negative metaphorical grenades being thrown
at them which then exploded throughout the media.
What metaphor/analogy could Goldman Sachs have used to
shift the SEC’s negative characterizations and public’s
perceptions? Send in your ideas to
amiller@annemiller.com.
