My 16-year-old son and I were driving through the Utah desert last week, embarking on the last leg of eight days in the Southwest to see canyons and other attractions we New Englanders get out of Dodge once in a while to see. We’d been on the road for several hours.

"Dad, where are we staying tonight?"

"Don’t know, Grasshopper. I’m sure we’ll find someone happy to take our money for a room between here and the airport, which is a good 300 miles away."

"Will we stay at a Hyatt Regency, like we did when we first got to Denver?"

"No way. They charge for Internet access, parking costs a mint and your car’s a mile away in the garage, and there was no shampoo in the bathroom, so I ran to Walgreen’s and bought some. The ‘brick oven pizza’ their café advertised looked and tasted like it came out of a box, and the waitress didn’t come near our table for so long that I had to leave her a note using my crossword puzzle pencil so we could leave and go to bed. And there was no fridge in our room."

"Well, why did we stay at the Hyatt in the first place?"

"Because for the first time, I tried priceline.com — you know, the Bill Shatner site — and specified 4-star hotels. The Hyatt is what they gave me. I thought it would be a good hotel."

"It sure looked awesome. It was kind of cool seeing the French rugby team in the lobby. And there was that limited edition Aston Martin parked out front."

"Yeah, but what we really wanted was good bedding, free wifi, reasonable parking fees, maybe free coffee in the morning and a swimming pool. The Hyatt had decent beds and a tiny pool. We had to pay extra for everything else."

"So what are we looking for, then?"

"I’m looking for another Comfort Inn, like the one we stayed in last night."

"Why a Comfort Inn?"

"Because it offers what travelers like us are looking for and at a reasonable price. The Hyatt charged a lot more for a lot less. At the Comfort Inn, the cost they quoted when we came in was what we paid when we checked out. The Hyatt kept adding on charges so I paid quite a bit more than what priceline.com had quoted."

"Oh, okay. Hey, there’s a Comfort Inn!"

We pulled in and spent another good night at a perfectly fine hotel. We paid the same rate and got everything we’d enjoyed at the previous Comfort Inn stay: Free Internet, free breakfast, a swimming pool and, darn it, a fridge. And free parking near the door.

So here’s the moral of the story: Brands live in the customer’s mind — not in your ad, not on your website, not in the mission statement posted in your lobby. And while it’s true that to come alive in the customer’s mind, your brand must deliver on what you promise, it must also speak to real customer needs in the first place. In a week in the Southwest, we experienced the Hyatt and Comfort Inn brands, as well as Expedia, priceline.com, Delta Airlines, Budget Rent A Car, the Ford Edge utility vehicle, the National Park Service and McDonald’s — most of them big brands with massive marketing budgets. The only brands that didn’t disappoint and that outshone the rest were Comfort Inn and the National Park Service, two names you don’t normally see buying up premium ad space.

Maybe that’s the point. Maybe they don’t have to.