Public universities are elephants; Private universities are lions

By George ILIEV
CorporateNature Metaphor Series, No 95

Big public universities are large herbivores: elephants, rhinos and hippos. They are slow(ish) but powerful and as a result are safe and well-established in their local environment.

For-profit universities are predators: lions, tigers and leopards. They punch above their weight (pound for pound) as their aggressive nature makes them more visible, with their much bigger marketing spend. They cannot kill the largest herbivores but they feast on medium-sized and smaller ones: zebras, antelopes and gazelles (i.e. outcompeting local universities and community colleges).

If elephants were more aggressive, they would be a formidable force in the savannah. But they rarely are, which leaves significant space for predators to mark as their territory. This goes along with the saying: "Public universities don't sell well what they do. Private universities often sell well what they don't do."

African elephant (Source: Wikipedia)

Brand proliferation and contraction cycle resembles rise and fall of melanin content in human skin

Product portfolios and evolutionary adaptations sometimes go full circle to get back to square one
George ILIEV

(Photo: Chimpanzee, Wikipedia)

Early humans had pink skin covered by black fur, similar to modern chimpanzees. Around 2 million years ago as humans were gradually losing their fur to allow easier sweating and cooling, their skin melanin content started to increase as a protection against ultraviolet radiation. This process was driven by natural selection as dark-skinned homo sapiens had an evolutionary advantage under the tropical sun over pink-skinned furless creatures. However, as humans migrated out of Africa and into northern latitudes, the high melanin content of dark skin became an obstacle for the absorption of UV light and the production of vitamin D in the body. This resulted in less calcium in the bones which made them brittle. Natural selection again stepped in, leading to the loss of pigmentation and the return of pink skin in latitudes higher than 46 degrees north, closing the cycle with the early pink-skinned humans.

A similar cycle can be observed in the evolution and loss of fins in ocean-dwelling animals. The fins of ancient fish were lost and became legs when they moved onto land and became tetrapods. The legs were lost and became fins again when the ancestors of whales and dolphins moved back into the ocean.

Many companies share a similar history of cycles of product/brand proliferation and contraction. Starting with one main product, companies like Unilever, General Motors and Google gradually developed an array of brands. However, as market conditions changed and the managerial complexity increased, brand proliferation peaked and the three companies above started scaling down their brand/product portfolios to focus on fewer core products.

The most famous novel in Chinese literature, "Three Kingdoms", encapsulates this cyclical nature in its opening sentence: "The World under Heaven long divided, must unite; long united, must divide".

Advertising helps humans surmount two evolutionary obstacles in food selection

A product that looks too different is either not noticed or consciously shunned
George ILIEV

(Photo: Fruit Loops, Wikipedia)

If something looks unfamiliar, it does not get eaten. Animals avoid eating unfamiliar berries or insects for two reasons: "dietary wariness" (fear of eating something poisonous) and "apostatic predation" (difficulty to spot prey that looks too different).

Humans in the supermarket do not need to worry about poisonous berries or insects, though high fat or sugar content may be almost equally undesirable characteristics of a food product. On the other hand, apostatic predation is something consumers often fall victim to, e.g. when unsuccessfully hunting for a familiar product whose package has been changed by the manufacturer.

This is where advertising steps in: by creating awareness for a cereal product, a commercial makes it both acceptable (i.e. reassuring that it is not harmful) and easy to spot among the packages of fried crickets and roasted beetles that British supermarkets regularly stock up. Looking too different and unfamiliar would help a package of cornflakes hang on to the supermarket shelf not for the love of marketing but for evolutionary reasons.