Bled Roof Inn

Last week Ms. Muse and I were up in Morro Bay for a big organized bike ride. While we were enjoying some post-ride camaraderie at a local "Mexican" Restaurant (wine-based margaritas are so Epcot Center) we found ourselves in a riveting discussion with fellow cyclists. 

Topic at hand: Motels. 

Fortunately we had other housing arrangements and were not staying at one of Morro Bay's many, many institutions of roadside hospitality. You can't get one full rotation of the bicycle pedals without spotting a motel in Morro Bay, which should be renamed Motel Bay. 

When it comes to inexpensive roadside motels, there's an alarming amount of parity going on. 

Put in football terms, were it not for the color of their uniforms, the NY Jets are essentially the same as the Denver Broncos who are as hopeless as the Chicago Bears.  

In the case of motels, particularly the ones belonging to a chain, like Marriot's 17 branded motels and Hilton's 23 branded motels. There's Comfort Suites, Comfort Lodge, Comfort Inn, Comfort Sleep, Comfort Comfort, and on and on it goes.  You'd have to be a forensic detective to spot the difference.

Or as one of our fellow cyclists so aptly put it, "I don't even know the name of the place we're staying at, but at least it's clean."

BINGO, I thought! 

At least it's CLEAN!

I could not help but to be reminded of a business pitch we did at Chiat so many years ago. Frankly it's a memory I need to have excised from my system as I am still plagued by dreams, nightmares really, of being stuck back at work and trying to come up with yet another campaign. 

Damn you Chiat/Day, the last time I was on staff there was 21 years ago. Can't I punch out yet?

In this one particular instance, we found ourselves pitching Red Roof Inn. The crown jewel of advertising agency accounts. That's when my partner John Shirley and I decided we should hang our hat on the notion of cleanliness. 

Having had experience with franchise operations in the past, we knew we couldn't propose anything that would incur additional operational costs. We once mistakenly suggested Hardees ditch their pan searing of cooking burgers and step up to fire grilled. 

That went over like a rack of spare ribs at a Kol Nidre service.

But cleanliness was something the staff and management could actually live up to. Moreover, it would give the organization a sense of purpose. A mission if you will.

On top of all that, we knew, instinctively that a motel that staked its name on cleanliness would out earn a motel that was perceived to be...well...not so clean.

Picture yourself and your family pulling off the freeway and calling it a day on driving. You just want to get a good night's sleep and find yourself at the freeway off ramp staring at a choice of 4 motels. Which one are you gonna choose? They're all about the same price. They all have lumpy beds. They all have half ply toilet paper. And they all have single pane glass, that won't filter the noise the from the freeway which is within field goal range of any room.

I don't know about you, but I'd want to lay my weary head on the one that at least had the sheen of clean. 

Not only was the thinking bulletproof, so were the ads that sprung forth from such a single-minded proposition. Sadly however, the agency CEO (who I often butted heads with, mine was sober, his was not) disagreed. 

Often vehemently.

We did the pitch (with his strategy, not ours). Several days after the tragedy of 9/11. And the account went bye-bye to some schlocky forgettable agency that did even schlockier forgettable work. Maybe you remember their short lived spokesthingy....

For reasons I can't fathom, this whole debacle has stuck in my craw. 

I never liked being overruled. And even less when I know we were right.

Serenity, now?