1313 Suite Hotel

I was listening to an ad on the radio and it occurred to me that we’ve gone too deep on this branding thing. I’m not talking about when someone tries to trademark a name like “super bowl” or “super bowl Sunday.”
Or even a phrase. Like recently the guy who says “let’s get ready to rumble” won a lawsuit against a disc jockey who also used the phrase. That’s unsettling. I don’t want Snoop Dogg suing me every time I say “for shizzle,” nor do I want the Charlie Brown syndicate to sue Snoop Dog every time his name invokes the image of the dog Snoopy.
No, what I’m talking about today is when we say something so often it becomes the name-as-a-unit rather then its component parts. Like in the ad I heard on the radio. It was for Shilo Inns.
Shilo Inns is no doubt a wonderful place to stay. And the owner, who is also the announcer on the radio, makes them sound very inviting. Not least because he also sounds more like Tom Selleck than Tom Boddett.
But he, or his marketing department, is apparently now rebranding his fine place as “Shilo Inns Suites Hotels.” He says that expanded name about five times in his ad. It’s a little disconcerting. I mean, an inn is already that suite thing—and that hotel thing.
They may have forgotten that the Inn part of Shilo Inns is actually a concept on its own. So saying Shilo Inns Suites Hotels is pushing redundancy over and over to its repetitive limit again and again.
“Yeah, I went to Shilo Inns Suites Hotels, and then I went out to dinner in my automobile car vehicle and ate at a restaurant bistro café.”
America, ya gotta love it.