The "Quality Inn" Rule

This posting is not meant to defame, insult or cause any damages to the fine people at Quality Inn. Instead, it was the interesting environment they provided to me that was the inspiration to the rule, which I then chose to name in their honor.* Hmkay?

This is a story about a rule I invented when I was traveling in the US circa 2006, and I ended up in the so-called "Quality Inn Houston Airport". Being a less savvy traveler back in those days, there were a few quick lessons I learned from checking in:

• It wasn't at, or even near, the Airport.
• It also wasn't anywhere near Houston.
• The place also didn't match with my perception of the word "Quality".

Sitting in my room thinking about this (there wasn't a lot else I could do there, anyway) I came up with a simple rule of thumb that applies just about everywhere:

"If it has to be part of the name, there's probably something wrong with it."

Key words to look for in names and statements include terms as "Open", "Quality", "Democratic" and "Chicken". As a corollary, organisations spending a lot of time stressing how "open", "transparent" or "democratic" they are probably have some patching up to do in those areas. I'm not going to name any examples, because they are both obvious and plentiful.

For marketeers, there's a simple lesson you can derive from this rule as well:

"Don't talk about market qualifiers as if they are something special"

And if you don't qualify, find something else that's nice you can talk about. 

* Applying the rule, however, I would urge them to reconsider the name they gave to their hotel: "Rural Location North of Houston Inn" comes to mind.

Lie to Me

I suppose I'm sort of an exception - working in marketing and being a fanatic about truth. Or at least, if you have to bend the truth a bit, make sure the other guy can't verify you're lying. Being seen as somebody who won't tell something that's bullshit gives you trust. Being seen as somebody who doesn't care about lying through his teeth works in the opposite direction, in a big fat hurry.

So here's my question. Or actually, three questions. Why do the organisations that we routinely have to trust our lives to lie so often, why so transparent and why are they increasingly doing this?

You can't handle the truth*
So why do organisations lie so often? Why are we living in an ever-increasing fairytale world where all is cuddly and shiny and perfect? There are a few reasons, I think:

• Truth is ugly. It's not a picture perfect fairytale and does not have good soundbites. In other words, it doesn't sell.
• While individuals can be smart, large groups of people are, without exception, dumb as bricks**. As a result, when being faced with anything unpleasant, like truth, either of two things happen: it is ignored or it gets an aggressive response. The message we're told is based on how we're being expected to respond - facts just get in the way. Actually, who needs facts anyway when you've got the Internet?
• Truth will get you sued. As a bit of an American disease we're becoming ever more wary of admitting we screwed up, because somebody could haul us into court for damages.

All of this is bringing us spiraling down into something between Never-Never land*** and the Matrix****.

It's the best story ever sold, and we're all buying it.

* http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104257/quotes. Colonel Jessep was probably on to something.
** http://www.despair.com/idiocy.html. There's a lot more careful thinking in parody than most people think.
*** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverland. The non-Disneyfied version of Peter Pan is far less of a bedtime story. Fairies are assholes, and so would you be if you had their powers.
**** http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/. Even though we're making technological progress unlike anything we've seen in the history of mankind, society seems stuck bouncing in between the 1950s and the 1990s, just so everybody stays in their comfort zone. Oh, and I want my Space shuttle and Concorde back, you bastards.