An airline surprise on a layover, and what it says about franchise brands

In short

Rob Lancit reposts a travel story because he worked out why it stayed with him. The previous August he was flying to Vancouver to visit his daughter, with a short layover in Houston. When the plane landed, an airline employee boarded, walked up to him and said a car was waiting to take him to his next gate. He jokes that he cannot remember her name and calls her Annie because she looked like one.

He expected a golf cart. He was instead taken off the plane, through a side door, down a staircase and onto the tarmac, where a new electric BMW drove him to his connection. He stresses that United did not have to do it. He had not asked, there was no complaint and nothing to fix.

The franchising lesson is in two short lines: consistency earns loyalty, and surprise creates advocates. Franchise people talk constantly about systems, standards and unit economics. The brands that win, he argues, are the ones that sometimes go past the playbook and give a customer something unexpected to remember and repeat. He ends by asking readers what small unexpected thing their own brand does that customers remember.

Summary by the editors of this site. The original is Rob’s own writing; see the post at the source.