This past weekend I took my wife away on a special anniversary weekend to Santa Barbara. A beautiful weekend getaway that I'd recommend to anyone, especially those of you in or near the West Coast. We stayed at a very nice hotel just across from the beach - great food and excellent service.
However, the experience that I will remember for its humor was when I filled out the breakfast form for room service. You'll probably recognize the form below (double click on the image to zoom in):
What struck me was the following line:
Please hang on outside doorknob before midnight
Forget that there are no doorknobs in hotels anymore - that is an insignificant detail. What I loved was the fact that they needed to specify which doorknob they were referring to . . . the outside one. Even better, I would love to see the word "outside" underlined, put in bold type or maybe even marked up with a yellow highlighter!
I had a vision of a few things:
1. The focus group where hotel management learn of the problem that unless they specified which doorknob, hotel guests would not get their food and the hotel would miss out on their most profitable food service channel (orange juice for $6.00?).
2. The innocent hotel guest who places their order on the inside doorknob and wakes to no hot coffee, no eggs and no stuffed french toast. Would they then think to themselves: Hmm, I wonder why they didn't take my order?
Of course, my wife just shook her head and, again, wondered aloud how my brain worked.
When you have to work real hard to explain an idea, is it a good one? If an idea is not self-evident, can it succeed in the market? Probably not.
If you have any examples of ideas that are trying too hard, send me an e-mail or comment below.
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