During the many conversations of the last few days, I have heard mention of both 900- and 1000-pound gorillas, in the context of business planning and market spaces. Given my familiarity with the more typical 800-pound variety, I noted the anecdotal accounts, and have now found time to follow up.
As a curious sort, I’m drawn to wonder whether this represents a dangerous gorilla obesity trend, or perhaps a selective pressure by speakers of Management for heftier competitors. To that end, I’ve compiled a short sample of data on the number of Google hits for phrases of the form “*-pound gorilla”.
Future studies investigating selective metaphoric gorilla-size pressure can perhaps draw on this data sample as a starting point.
While it’s too early to say on the basis of such scant data, there may be some evidence here for gorilla weight quantization of multiples of 400 pounds, and an anomalous lack of 700- and 1100- pound gorillas that would argue against random size drift.
Perhaps the surprising lack of 700-pound gorillas can provide a hint towards experiments studying metaphoric gorilla evo-devo? Hard to say at this early stage.
How big is your gorilla?
This is absolutely brilliant!!!
May I suggest a semi-log plot, so we can compare the rarer specimens? Right now, the chart is, uh, dominated by the 800-pound gorilla.
Bret, if you follow the link to Swivel, you’ll note that the service not only allows you to create additional charts, but amend the data yourself. My thought is that perhaps we’ll collect a series of snapshots of gorilla weight distributions, and see what trends develop.
I had to go to wikipedia to find out what non-metaphoric gorillas weigh:
This suggests that metaphoric gorillas, like their natural namesakes, grew in captivity, but at a much faster rate.
We could not resist. Your gorilla data made the Swivel front page. Thanks for posting it!
-Sara
http://swivel.com
I’m flattered. All we need is a more prominent inbound link here, and all my marketing friends will be Swiveling all over the place
It may be that smaller gorilla metaphors are more susceptible to death from metaphorical ebola outbreaks.
what about the elephant !
WHAT ABOUT THE ELEPHANT !
I assume you mean the elephant in the drawing room? Don’t see it.