"Metaphors are a very powerful tool because they are familiar to everyone, they help tie together related concepts, and as the Olson Zaltman study revealed, they resonate in the deepest possible way."   

-- Ashley Memory,
Senior Director of Admissions,
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

> ZMET in Situ

> Implicit Association Evaluator (IAE)

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The Olson Zaltman Difference

Implicit Association Evaluator (IAE)

How strongly does your brand own a particular emotion? 
What unconscious messages does that new package design deliver?
What new product categories make the most sense for a brand extension?

Implicit Association Evaluator (IAE) helps our clients find the answers to questions like these.  IAE is a proprietary quantitative biometric tool, based on decades of research showing that most human cognition occurs at unconscious levels.  This research has amply demonstrated that the implicit measures of cognitive processes are significantly better predictors of actual behavior than direct (explicit) measures. 

ZMET^® uncovers important, relevant concepts, emotions, feelings, metaphors.  IAE can quantify how strongly these cognitions are associated (a) with one another and/or (b) with marketing variables such as product attributes and benefits, specific brand names, positioning statements, or advertising cues. 

Here is an example of how an IAE works…
(pdf)