Service Branding: It is About the Hole Not the Drill

One the keys to building sustainable communities is redefining the unsustainable social norms. The emphasis on personal ownership is one such problem. Instead, many people have talked about product-service-systems, which are models for sharing different kinds of equipment. So instead of every house hold owning their own power drill (which on average are only used 20 minutes in their life time) a community will own a power drill, allowing members access on an as-needed bases. One of the problems to this is the connection of ownership and status (you haven’t really made it till you own the drill.) Alex Steffen (yes my brother) wrote a really interesting post for worldchanging.com on the branding of services (convincing the public they only need to drill a hole, they do not need to own the drill). It is worth checking out.