Dr Samantha Ford

Marketing Linguist and Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Bristol Business School
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​Samantha is an interdisciplinary researcher in cognitive and applied linguistics in marketing - marketing linguistics. Samantha investigates how figurative communication shapes, and is shaped by, our thoughts, feelings, and actions in multimodal marketing and organisational discourse. Samantha looks at transformative marketing, brand activism, information processing, and creativity in creative management firms.

Samantha is currently researching the role and effect of figurative communication - involving metaphor, metonymy, pun, and hyperbole - in health and wellbeing taboos (mental, physical, sexual), minority and marginalised group representation, and social media misinformation.

Samantha is co-author of the book entitled Unpacking Creativity: The Power of Figurative Communication in Advertising, and has published in top quality journals including Language and Cognition, Metaphor and Symbol, and Creativity and Innovation Management.

Samantha is open to research partnerships, consultancy, and training that requires a specialism in multimodal, visual, and/or English communication. Samantha has worked with marketing agencies (McCann), not-for-profit and charity organisations (NHS), and businesses  that want to make a positive change to people's lives.
PhD
No Corrections
English Language & Applied Linguistics
University of Birmingham
Collaborative Doctoral Award (AHRC)
MA by Research
First Class
​English Language & Applied Linguistics
University of Birmingham
​Masters Level Scholarship
BA (hons)
First Class
​​English Language
University of Birmingham
Research Project Prize

 Unpacking Creativity:
​The Power of Figurative Communication in Advertising

Figurative communication (the use of metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole and irony) provides economy of expression, clarity, persuasiveness, politeness, evaluation, and communication of emotions. However, it also increases the potential for misunderstanding in situations when people lack shared background knowledge. This book combines theoretical frameworks with empirical studies that measure the effectiveness of different approaches to the use of figurative language in advertisements, to show how to maximise the benefits of creative metaphor and metonymy in global advertising. It highlights how subtle differences in colour, layout, and combinations of different kinds of figurative language affect the reception and appreciation of creative advertising, shedding new light on the nature of figurative communication itself. With a balance between theory, experiments and practical case studies, this book is accessible for academics in linguistics and communication studies, as well as advertising and marketing professionals.

Case study:
The role of metaphor and humour in a sexual health campaign

Samantha works with Big Cat Advertising Agency as part of her collaborative PhD and the EMMA project, examining the impact of figurative language and emotion in advertising on consumer attitude and behaviour.

Brief:
  • Break down the stigma related to sexually transmitted infections (STIs)
  • Raise awareness of sexual health services provided by Umbrella Health Trust in the West Midlands (UK) region
  • Increase orders of home-testing kits for sexually transmitted infections

Approach:
We manipulated the kinds of linguistic metaphors through humorous innuendo in a sexual health testing campaign and measured people's responses, with regards to their interpretation, attitude, and behaivour toward the campaign.

Result:
The campaign was launched in Birmingham and Solihull, UK, in June 2019, and saw an 51% increase in orders for STI home-testing kits and an additional 778 diagnoses of STIs, getting people the treatment that they need. Positive consumer responses were elicited through optimal cognitive effort in figuring out the message, and creative and action metaphors.  

Check out Samantha's work