Stick with me for a moment, but the ad is also an apt, albeit Halloween-themed, metaphor for the current relationship between consumers, brands—and the constant effort to hold our attention.

The ad was “clearly a metaphor” understood by “every normal person,” insisted Eric Greitens, seen here speaking at CPAC in Florida in February. Bloomberg via Getty Images ...

Barbara J. Phillips, Edward F. McQuarrie, Impact of Advertising Metaphor on Consumer Belief: Delineating the Contribution of Comparison versus Deviation Factors, Journal of Advertising, Vol. 38, No. 1 ...

Journal of Advertising, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Spring 2011), pp. 121-130 (10 pages) All forms of personification draw on anthropomorphism, the propensity to attribute human characteristics to objects. In an ...

Citation Coulter, Robin A., Gerald Zaltman, and Keith S. Coulter. " Interpreting Consumer Perceptions of Advertising: An Application of the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique." Journal of ...

Zaltman, Gerald, and R. Coulter. "Seeing the Voice of the Customer: Metaphor-based Advertising Research." Journal of Advertising Research 35, no. 4 (July–August 1995): 35–51.