Fluff

A metaphor for the relationship your business creates with its clients could be seen as fluff.   A nice marketing touch.  Something to hang a campaign on, to help people choose you over others.

But it can and should go much deeper than that.

Blue Rocket Accounting used their metaphor ("we are Mission Control to your space mission") to standardise their services, to define the Roles people working in the business play for clients and to design how they deliver on that promise.  The metaphor becomes shorthand for the purpose - 'what we do for the people we serve'.

That's not fluff.  That's the foundation.