Sell an Idea with an Image: Why Analogies Work in Marketing
I’ve been in this moment more times than I’d like to admit.
You explain a new idea to a client. There’s a pause.
“Okay… but what exactly do you mean?”
Most of the time, it’s not a request for more facts. It’s a request for a picture.
Abstract thinking is expensive for the brain. When a message stays abstract, people don’t “disagree” with it, they just can’t hold it in their head long enough to do anything with it. What they often need isn’t more information, but something they can see.
That’s what a good analogy does. It turns the abstract into something tangible, the complex into something familiar, and the distant into something emotionally close.
In marketing, analogies aren’t decoration. They’re cognitive tools.
Used carefully, an analogy can speed up understanding, make the emotional meaning clearer, and shift perception faster than facts alone usually can. Not because facts don’t matter, but because the brain needs a structure to put them into.
Why analogies work
The brain searches for a familiar pattern
When people meet something new, they immediately look for a known pattern to process it. An analogy gives the brain a shortcut. It’s a bridge between “I don’t know what this is” and “I’ve seen something like this before.”
Research on learning and reasoning often points to analogy as one of the fastest ways to explain unfamiliar concepts. It lowers cognitive load by reusing mental structures that already exist. In plain language, it helps the brain stop working so hard.
A University of Delaware study described how consumers understood unfamiliar products faster when those products were framed through analogy. The classic example was something like “Spotify for your wine collection”, which landed quicker than a technical description.
This sounds obvious. And still, in real work, it’s rare. “Simple” is often the hardest thing to produce.
Key point: Analogies reduce mental effort and make new ideas feel immediately clear.
When analogies matter most
1) Launching something genuinely new
When a product doesn’t fit an existing category, people don’t have a mental map. Analogies give them one.
Even a good spec sheet can’t do this job on its own. Specs describe. Analogies orient. They tell a person where to “place” the new thing in their existing mental world, so they can decide whether it’s relevant.
2) Explaining complex or technical offerings
B2B, SaaS, and infrastructure products often drown people in features. Analogies translate “how it works” into “what it feels like” and “why it matters,” which is usually what the buyer is trying to understand first.
Vickie Sullivan makes a useful point here: analogies can explain an idea and establish your perspective at the same time.
3) Strengthening emotional connection
Good analogies don’t just inform. They imprint.
They also do something subtle. They give the reader a role in the meaning-making, because they’re not only receiving information, they’re completing a comparison.
Key point: Analogies matter most when clarity and connection matter more than detail.
Types of analogies and how to choose
Close vs. distant analogies
Close analogies come from familiar domains. Distant analogies borrow from unexpected contexts.
Close ones are safer. Distant ones can be stronger, but they raise the bar for clarity. If the audience has to decode the comparison, you’ve lost the advantage that made analogy useful in the first place.
Verbal vs. visual analogies
Visual metaphors often land faster than words. They can trigger emotion before logic, which is exactly why they’re risky and useful at the same time.
If the visual is too clever, people remember the image and forget the meaning. If it’s too literal, it stops doing any work. The sweet spot is when the audience “gets it” quickly and then keeps reading, not when they pause to admire the concept.
Explicit vs. implicit analogies
Explicit analogies state the comparison directly (“X is like Y”). Implicit ones invite the audience to make the connection themselves.
Implicit can be powerful, but it’s also easier to misread. If the reader forms the “wrong” connection, you don’t get credit for being subtle, you just get a confused audience.
Key point: The best analogy matches the audience’s mindset and the message’s complexity.
How to use analogies in real marketing work
1) Start with the one thing you want understood
What should the audience understand and believe after they see this?
2) Find a shared reference point
What experience or image already exists in their world?
3) Build the bridge (and admit the limits)
Make the parallel clear, then acknowledge where it stops. Clarity beats cleverness.
4) Test it early
A bad analogy doesn’t just confuse people. It makes them doubt you.
Copywriters Roundtable has a good warning: when an analogy fails, it can break trust because the reader feels misled, not merely uncertain.
5) Let it echo, don’t make it shout
Use it in headlines, visuals, scripts, sales decks. Repetition helps, but only if it stays consistent.
6) Watch the response
If the analogy distracts, or if people repeat the comparison but miss the point, adjust.
(Like a road sign, a good analogy should keep pointing in the right direction as the audience moves.)
Key point: An analogy is a strategic asset, not a decorative phrase.
Common pitfalls
Analogies usually fail for predictable reasons:
Chosen for cleverness, not fit. People remember the comparison, not the idea.
Too distant. The audience spends energy decoding instead of understanding.
Culturally mismatched. The reference point doesn’t exist for them.
Overexplained. The analogy stops being a bridge and becomes a lecture.
Ethically careless. It offends, trivializes, or creates the wrong emotional tone.
Amy Harrison sums up the core risk simply: a wrong analogy can do more damage than a plain statement.
Key point: Analogies work only when they respect context and cognition.
Real-world examples
SunGard once framed its cloud services through a “zombie apocalypse” survival analogy. It was intentionally distant, but effective at communicating resilience and backup value.
That example matters because it shows the real function of a bold analogy. It’s not “fun”. It’s a compression tool. It packs a set of benefits (resilience, continuity, backup) into one scenario the audience can instantly picture.
VeryGoodCopy frames analogy as craft, not flourish: copywriters don’t sell words, they build bridges between ideas.
Key point: Strong analogies clarify and connect, logic with emotion baked in.
How to measure whether an analogy worked
If you treat analogies as tools, you can measure them like tools:
A/B tests: with and without the analogy, track comprehension proxies (dwell time, scroll depth, drop-off).
Behavioral response: clicks, sign-ups, form completions, demo requests.
Qualitative checks: ask one question: “What did this make you imagine?”
Recall later: test memory after a delay, not right after exposure.
A successful analogy changes how people think, and sometimes how they act.
Key point: If you can’t measure it at all, you’re probably using it as decoration.
Limits (a necessary counterpoint)
Analogies aren’t universal.
When an audience already understands a product deeply, precision can beat imagery. In expert or highly technical markets, a literal explanation may feel more respectful and less distracting.
A paper from the University of Wollongong suggests an important nuance: analogies can improve comprehension, but that doesn’t always translate into higher preference.
Conclusion
Analogies speed understanding.
They help shape emotional meaning.
They’re especially useful for new, complex, or abstract ideas.
But they only work when they’re designed deliberately, tested early, and used with restraint.
A small exercise before your next campaign
I’d ask myself two questions:
What image would make this instantly clear?
What familiar story could carry this unfamiliar idea?
Because most messages don’t fail on logic. They fail because the audience never got a picture to hold onto.
