So, if you’re a beer maker and you’re not Budweiser, you had better hope you can flog your beer using one of the remaining six metaphors. ‘Control’ and ‘balance’ are probably out of the question, as those are the first things to go when you drink beer, but don’t be disheartened. You still have transformation, journey, container and resource to choose from. Actually, scrap that. You can’t use resource as Miller Brewing Company already owns that metaphor: ‘If you’ve got the time, we’ve got the beer.’ As a brand manager, you can see the dilemma. Too few deep metaphors, too many products.

But this is not my only gripe. The idea that these metaphors only reside at a deep subconscious level is ludicrous. Are the Zaltmans telling us that no one would consciously associate Cisco – the company that provides the kit that most of the Internet runs on – with ‘connection’? Is this really some Jungian archetype that can only be coaxed out of the dark corners of our minds with Gerald Zaltman’s patented ‘Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique’? Is it really not obvious to everyone that telecoms companies are associated with connection, medicine is associated with transformation and that petrol is associated with resource?

Nevertheless, Lucas Conley is concerned that people like Gerald Zaltman are using ever more sophisticated techniques to – as he puts it – ‘bypass our bullshit filters’. In fact, Conley has a pop at the Zaltmans in his book, OBD: Obsessive branding disorder. The Zaltmans, it transpires, really are desperate to read the minds of consumers. Gerald Zaltman pioneered the use of MRI brain scanners to figure out what makes consumers tick.

But scanning consumers’ brains while they sample rival soft drinks is just one trick in the marketers’ book. In OBD, Conley looks at many other techniques marketers use to woo us. One of the latest ways is to focus on all of our senses, not just sight (83 per cent of ads appeal only to our sight). They’re looking for ways to ‘hack into our subconscious with sensory appeal’, warns Conley. There is someone who makes sure that your cornflakes crunch just so when you bite into them. There is someone else who creates the appealing scent of a new mobile phone. Conley is concerned that even if he closes his eyes, he will still be bombarded by brands through his other senses. He feels under siege.