People like me get a bit of a hard-on when it comes to expressing complex things with simple metaphors. Sometimes these metaphors are smart and useful, other times they make us look like dicks.

I’ll leave you to decide if I’m being smart or a dick with this one, as I explain why I think heat transfer is a useful way to think about marketing.

A brief intro:

‘Marketing’ is complex. It’s not one thing. Or even lots of things. The word ‘thing’ implies a permanence and singularity that simply isn’t accurate any more. The social-media-boom in particular confused things. Lots of people did – and continue to – use the word ‘viral’ for the idea of ‘infecting’ people with your ‘ideas’. Others challenged this metaphor. Yada yada.. you know the story by now. No one metaphor really helped describe all aspects of marketing. And ‘who was doing what to – or with – whom’ also confused things.

Heat transfer is an interesting alternative way of thinking about marketing. I invite you to consider ‘heat’ in this instance a metaphor for ‘value’.

The goal of marketing is, in my mind, to transmit the value of a product beyond the actual product itself – in the form of seeing, understanding, feeling and enjoying it.

It doesn’t matter who instigates it, so long as the value your product offers ‘reaches’ as many people as possible. What is important is the different ways value can be transmitted, which is where the heat analogy is surprisingly useful.

the 3 types of heat transfer:

1. Conduction
“The transfer of heat by direct contact”
In marketing, this describes direct contact with the product or service. If people can try it, hold it, use it, smell it etc its value is transferred with absolute immediacy. This is often the smartest and most direct way to communicate the value of your product. But of course it’s not always possible.

2. Radiation
“Radiation is the transfer of heat energy through empty space.”
In marketing, radiation is traditional advertising and message-based marketing. These communications broadcast information (emotional and functional) about the value of the product and are far-reaching. They are beamed at us despite the ‘distance’ we might think is between us and the product in question.

3. Convection
“The movement of molecules within fluids (i.e. liquids, gases and rheids).”
This, if you’ll allow me to leap (naked and care-free) back across to marketing, relates to the flowing currents of social interaction that transfer information about the value of your product. Social excitement is akin to the heating up of molecules as heat (value) meets cold (absence of said value). I.e. All that social media jazz.

Pleasingly, there are two types of convection that help to tell the story even more thoroughly:

a. Natural convection
This is where it is the heat (value) itself that actually causes the flow of the fluid motion. I.e. If the value of your product is great enough, it will trigger social spread naturally.

b. Forced convection
“Heat [value] is carried passively by a fluid motion which would occur anyway.” I.e. Existing and relevant conversations are already taking place; the flow is in place already so the goal is to feed information about the value of your product into that flow.

I love how perfectly these two terms highlight the difference between good, explosive currency and weak currency – that requires ‘forcing’.

And one other nice nugget from my brief research:

Radiant barriers “inhibit heat transfer. However, radiant barriers do not necessarily protect against heat transfer via conduction or convection.” I.e. [cough] People find it fairly easy to reflect/reject advertising (radiation) but direct contact with the product (conduction) and social reassurance (convection) are harder to ignore.

Is this science? Nope. Is it useful? Maybe. As we tend to do with over-simplistic metaphors, I’ve probably tried to squeeze too much out of it. But hopefully it’s been worthwhile to share.