Can a Utility Company Walk Your Dog?

Last year I was at our High Performance Marketing Congress were a manager of a utility company suggested that they were developing new services to reduce customer attrition. So far, nothing extraordinary. But then he suggested that they were considering to offer to walk your dog. Now this was odd!

While wondering if this was a joke on the audience, I found out it was for real. This raised my thought: can a utility company walk your dog?

For months I strolled along with this question. Why is this so odd? What is not right?

Recently I spoke to a colleague and we discussed the Maslow hierarchy of needs. Then it jumped into my mind. Utility Companies, as the name suggests, offer commodity services. Power, water, sewage, etc. Stuff you really must have and rely on that it's there, but never think or care about. In essence, they fulfill my physiological needs.

Although I don't own a dog, I can imagine that most people consider them as part of their (extended) family. Some would have one to enhance their achievement, like Paris Hilton's Tinkerbell. This implies that their dog is either on the level of Love/Belonging or on the level of Esteem. Both are significantly higher in the hierarchy than a utility company.

So, would you trust your dog, which is part of your family or represents your achievement,

to your utility company, which does not give you any emotion? Of course not, you care about your dog!

So what does this tell us?

I believe that a company can choose to either extend its brand by developing new services on the same Maslow level it

currently has, or to build its brand by gradually going up in the hierarchy, but only one step at a time.

An example of the latter is Page toilet paper. Toilet paper used to be a commodity but Page cleverly lifted its status to that of Family/Belonging. It's soft, "pillow soft, extra think and a little bit of extra luxury". In fact you would even entrust it to your dog.

Wow!