Cats and customer segments sometimes never meet or intersect

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 107

Google Streetview recently took a photo of a cat jumping over the wall into the back yard of our house. It was a tabby cat I had never seen before. I knew the other two black and white cats that stroll in our garden but I didn't know about this one. I asked cat experts and it turns out cats are territorial so in areas densely populated with cats, they share space by agreeing on "usage rights" of the same space at different times of day for the different cats. In this way, the cats that share our garden never meet - but they know and respect each other's visitation hours. 

Customer segments can be similar to cats: if your company has a product that sells to different audiences, these audiences may be so different that they don't intersect at all. For example, Apple iPhones are bought by trendy young people who want to have the latest technology as well as by chief executives who appreciate the convenience of the phone and its security features.

The tabby cat I had not seen before was always coming in the late morning when I am away. Google Streetview let the cat out of the bag.

Tabby cat (Source: Wikipedia)

Water drinking is like resource consumption: different organisms practice it differently

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 91

Animals drink water in different ways. Amphibians absorb water through their skin, so they don't ever need to drink. Most terrestrial animals don't need to drink either, as they take in sufficient water through eating succulent food (e.g. leafy plants). Cats and dogs lap up water by using their tongue as a spoon, though there is a difference: dogs seem to be using their tongue more directly as a spoon, while cats whip up the water and then catch it with their mouth.

Humans, in contrast, suck water up or pour it down their  throat, which makes their way of drinking much more efficient and the volume of liquid ingested much larger. In this drinking resembles resource consumption: while most organisms use resources in a diffuse way, humans like to conentrate their resource consumption, resulting in big gulps of water flowing down the throat.

Drinking (Source: Wikipedia)