Seven GIANTS :

In some twelve thousand in-depth interviews for more than a hundred clients in over thirty countries, seven deep metaphors have surfaced with the greatest frequency in every sector- finance, food, transportation, and so forth- and in every country, regardless of the research team.

People who otherwise differ in cultural background, age, gender, education, occupation, political values, consumer experiences, basic beliefs, religious preference, and almost anything else we can name share these seven giants. Click on the numbers to explore:

Journey :

How the Meeting of Past, Present, and Future Affects Consumer Thinking

Consumers talk about many aspects in life as a journey.  In fact, we often frame life itself as one big journey, including, for many, an afterlife.  Sometimes we think of our lives as a brief journey, as in “life is short”; other times we view it as a lengthy, as in “he still had so much life to live,” when a journey ends prematurely.  Confucius purportedly said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Consider Robert Frost’s famous poem, The Road Not Taken, in which the speaker says, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled.” Like Confucius, Frost conveys the unknown nature of many journeys.  Other journeys have predictable outcomes, such as knowing that if you “stay on track” at work, you will earn a promotion. Journeys can be fast or slow- “time flies” but “are we there yet?”- or be “an uphill climb” or “all downhill from here.”