Denny’s has been making noise of late. That alone is news for a company which for years has been effectively brand-dead. But new chief marketing and innovation officer Mark Chmiel has shaken things up, first with an attention-getting Super Bowl promotion and now with new, musician-themed menu items and a late-night marketing strategy.

At first blush it seems odd that a brand that was once intentionally associated with octogenarians (“Did you say ‘Lenny’s'?”) would link itself to performers such as Jewel, Rascal Flatts and Good Charlotte. But brands can’t long survive if their customers continue to die, a lesson too many carmakers and cafeteria chains have learned the hard way. Chmiel understands that and no doubt witnessed the success another brand once destined for the grave had using the music of a younger generation. Imagine being on the team that first broached the idea of making Led Zeppelin’s “Rock and Roll” the theme song for Cadillac. That took guts, and it paid off.

Denny’s is struggling, like all restaurant chains, with a rotten economy, and same store sales have been flat or down. But the new late night strategy has generated a 5 percent increase in traffic, which is nothing to sneeze at. The rejuvenation of brand Denny’s won’t be easy, but the company deserves credit for recognizing that when growth stalls, sometimes it’s your own fault.

Here’s to its success. I haven’t been to Denny’s in some time, but I’ll give the brand credit by voting with my feet and stopping in to try the new items. I might even choose the Rascal Flatts biscuit, which isn’t only covered in gravy but eggs, cheese, bacon and country-fried steak too.

Then again, maybe I’ll just have oatmeal.

Four days. Three colleges. And one fabulous opportunity to observe the teenage consumer decision-making process in action. Last week I had the pleasure of observing my son as he took in his options and began processing intense amounts of information in preparation for making one of the biggest decisions of his life.

College is, of course, an extremely high-involvement decision. Scholarships aside (and we’re counting on them) it is among the most expensive and consequential decisions any of us makes. And the fact that such a weighty decision happens at the tender young age of seventeen or eighteen makes the stakes even higher (the reason most parents offer all the free advice and guidance a son or daughter could want).

Here’s what’s odd. You’d think that for such a significant decision, the determining factor would be substantive issues like size, curriculum, faculty, tuition, or even location and campus culture. But since my son had already narrowed his choices to a fairly similar set of schools, the colleges we visited weren’t very different in those arenas (in fact, the total for tuition, fees and room & board were virtually identical, which my cynical side found unsurprising).

The schools, however, didn’t seem to appreciate their lack of differentiation, even though they all admitted that they regularly compete with one another for students. That made the thousands and thousands of dollars they spent on websites, printed materials and admissions counselors all the more interesting to me.

What we were left with were impressions made by the odds and ends of each visit–the counselor who talked too fast, giving us the sense that she’d done this a few too many times, the welcome desk that had no record of our appointment (even though it had been arranged ahead of time), the quality of that day’s menu in the cafeteria, or the tour guide who seemed to intentionally avoid certain buildings. Not all of these odds and ends were negative, of course, and there were some pleasant surprises. But I found it interesting how weighty these otherwise insignificant elements of the decision process may end up being in the end.

The campus visit is only one part of the bigger decision, and my son has more research and reflection to do over the coming months. But visiting a place where he may be spending the next four or five years of his life presents the most sensory-rich opportunity for any college to seal the deal. They each had well developed orientation programs in place, but how those programs were executed on that day with this student could end up making all the difference.

It’s a good reminder for your business and mine. Plans are terrific and intentions are fine, but without consistent execution none of it matters.