Thinking "outside the box"

I like La Quinta. I've stayed many times at one of their hotels in Stamford, CT, typically when I have to be in NYC the following morning. I love some of the little things, like the fact that they have real wardrobes in their rooms, rather than closets.

But I'm not crazy about the television advertisements. They have a series of ads that attempt to illustrate that a night's stay at La Quinta enables you to do great things, as defined by various clichés (have your ducks in a row, pull out all the stops, get a leg up on the competition, sell ice to Eskimos and so forth). The gag is that at the end of the ad the cliché is presented literally.

The whole campaign is only mildly annoying. There are far worse. But there is one that especially annoys me. A business consultant should stay at La Quinta, we're told, because when he does he can "think outside the box" at the meeting the next morning. The other presumably inferior consultants, who presumably stayed in a Hilton or something, are portrayed as crowded together in a cardboard box.

Now, I like the expression, "think outside the box." And I know its origin, which has nothing to do with cardboard. See an explanation here.

BUT ... the La Quinta commercial portrays egregious jargon as "outside the box." The fellow who isn't trapped therein, who presumably stayed at a suite with an actual wardrobe, tells the executive of the company seeking his help that the solution to its problems is "synergistic integration." Then he makes a gesture with his hands showing interlinked fingers.

Really? "Synergistic integration"???? That's "outside the box"? I dare anyone to give me any example of any more clichéd, threadbare, inside-the-box, conformist piece of claptrap a consultant could possibly come up with than "synergistic integration"!

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