Sunday 24 June 2012

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.

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