Qualityland

* * * QualityLand * * *

Your Personal Travel Guide

INTRODUCTION

“Come to where the quality is!

Come to QualityLand!”

So you’re off to QualityLand for the first time ever. Are you excited? Yes? And quite rightly so! You’ll soon be entering a country so important that its foundation prompted the introduction of a new calendar system: QualityTime.

As you don’t yet know your way around QualityLand, we’ve put together a brief introduction for you. Two years before QualityLand was founded—or in other words, two years before QualityTime—there was an economic crisis of such severity that it became known as the crisis of the century. It was the third crisis of the century within just a decade. Swept along by the panic of the financial markets, the government turned for help to the business consultants from Big Business Consulting (BBC) who decided that what the country needed most was a new name. The old one was worn-out and, according to surveys, only inspired die-hard nationalists with minimal buying power. Not to mention the fact that the renaming would also divest the country of a few unpleasant historical responsibilities in the process. In the past, its army had been known to… well, let’s just say they overshot the mark a little.

The business consultancy firm commissioned the creatives at the advertising agency World Wide Wholesale (WWW) to come up with a new name for the country, as well as a new image, new icons, and a new culture. In short: a new country identity. After a considerable amount of time and even more money, after suggestions and countersuggestions, everyone involved finally agreed upon the now world-famous name: QualityLand. Can you imagine any name more perfectly suited for appearing after “made in” on products? The parliament voted in favor by a large majority. Or rather, by the “largest” majority, because the new country identity strictly forbids the use of the positive or comparative in connection with QualityLand. Only the superlative is allowed. So be careful. If someone asks you what you think of QualityLand, don’t just say that QualityLand is a wonderful country. It’s not a wonderful country. It’s the wonderfullest country there is!

Even the towns you are likely to visit on your travels used to have other, insignificant-sounding names. Now they have newer, better names, or as one would say in QualityLand, the newest and best names. Growth, the industrial center, expands and prospers in the south, while the university city of Progress pulsates in the north and the old trade capital Profit thrives in the country’s heartland. And then, of course, at the forefront of them all, there’s the undisputed capital of the free world: QualityCity!

Even QualityLand’s inhabitants were renamed. They couldn’t just be ordinary people, after all; they had to be QualityPeople. Their surnames in particular sounded very medieval and didn’t fit with the new progress-oriented country identity. A land of Millers, Smiths, and Taylors isn’t exactly a high-tech investor’s wet dream. And so the advertising agency decided that, from that moment on, every boy would be given his father’s occupation as a surname and every girl the occupation of her mother. The deciding factor would be the job held at the time of conception.

We wish you an unforgettable stay in the land of Sabrina Mechatronics-Engineer and Jason Cleaner, the most popular middle-class rap duo of the decade. The land of Scarlett Prisoner and her twin brother Robert Warden, the undefeated BattleBot jockeys of the century. The land of Claudia Superstar, the Sexiest Woman of All Time. The land of Henryk Engineer, the richest person in the world.

Welcome to the land of the superlative. Welcome to QualityLand.