Last week Lord Sugar had his remaining potential apprentices create green screen experiences that shoppers would want to purchase and take home as a souvenir.

Requiring a very different sense of strategy from the advertising challenge in the previous week, the critical aspects of the task this week were:

• To select and create green screen experiences that would appeal to shoppers.
• To sell and deliver these experiences in a shopping center.
• To produce and deliver the experience on a DVD for the customer.
• Manage costs to maximise profit.

Although I’m certain that the whole of England was hoping that Stuart’s team would lose after his memorable and shockingly brazen comments, Sandeesh’s team ultimately lost the task and she was sent home.

Let’s take a look at the strategy (and lack there of) of each team:

The edited episode showed Stuart making hasty decisions, which clearly did not impress his team. More concerned with boardroom strategy than business strategy, Stuart made everyone entirely accountable for their respective areas and was clear that they would be “put on the chopping block” if their area was poor performing.  Meanwhile Stuart spent a quarter of the challenge racing cars to create the racing scene that would become the basis of the take home experience for customers.

Stuart originally led his team in a direction which targeted an older demographic, but the team quickly realised that take home family video experiences were more easily sold to children (and their parents). One seemingly small detail that ultimately contributed to Stuart’s team’s win was his estimate of how many DVD’s to purchase. The project manager pulled the number 30 out of his head, which turned out to be much more realistic than Liz’s calculated and thought through order of 110 DVD’s based on production capacity for the day.

Ultimately Stuart’s team sold DVD’s at a much higher price than did Sandeesh’s team. Stuart’s team started selling on time, and despite Stuart himself being responsible for quality control and messing up at least one of the customers’ DVD’s, Joanna did an excellent job working with the children (the customers), even giving them all a medal when they were the winner in their challenge experience.

Despite Stuart’s appalling management style, Sandeesh proved to have little vision for her team. Although they nailed the target demographic early, training the team members who ran the video editing software caused the team to be one hour late for opening. Sandeesh’s team also employed a much lower price point than did Stuart’s team, and were very quick to lower the price of the experience part way through the day in an effort to boost sales.

Although Sandeesh’s team made a greater number of sales during the day, their costs were higher and ultimately made a smaller profit than did Stuart’s team.

Tonight (Wednesday) the teams are off to Germany! Follow our commentary at 2100 on Twitter!

Yes, the Queen is on Facebook. It was inevitable and we should have seen it coming ever since she addressed the world on Youtube. If only I had been smart enough to snatch up www.facebook.com/thebritishmonarchy I could have made a small sum, or even owned an unofficial monarchy page.

Engagement you ask? Not the Prince William type (and we actually did write this just before Prince William announced his engagement to Kate Middleton today), the other kind of engagement. The British Monarchy engaging their audiences who spend their time in Facebook, and whom are getting a very warm welcome.

It’s been about two weeks and at a last count there have been hundreds of thousands of followers that have “liked” them. Depending on how Prince William and Kate use this new medium to communicate with Royal fans, the potential for followers is exponential.

Although expected, I was caught by surprise by a small, tiny comment on the homepage in the haiku-like “about me” box. “Please note that any offensive comments will be deleted”.

A question asked by many companies and organisations when setting up a Facebook page, is whether or not to delete negative comments. Now interestingly enough, the posting to wall functionality has been disabled, however what the general public can do, is comment on a royal post.

Perhaps in one of the most engaging mediums of all time, the general public has a desire to comment on these pictures, most likely posted by someone in a position of relatively high responsibility at an advertising agency or a digital media agency.

As you can see from the posting, these fans are engaging in a genuine and utmost authentic way. “What a thrill” to see my favorite actresses receiving MBE’s as noted by Stuart Parkinson for the world to see.

“I wonder what the joke was” asks Sean Schilke. Is the ability to comment on pictures and activities of the Royal family strengthening people’s brand association with the Monarchy?

At least the new Royal wind farm developments can fund the room full of people who will spend every waking hour reviewing each and every last comment, deleting the offensive comments. It will be very interesting to see the how many people will grow to “like” the royal family, and whether or not it will contribute to national and international “liking” of the Monarchy.

This past week the teams were tasked with creating a new brand of cleaning product. The teams had to create a look for the product itself, as well as a television and radio ad to support the product.

In recognition that the products of both teams were similar, let’s take a look at the campaigns of both teams from a strategic corporate image perspective.

Alex’s Team: The Germinator

Key Elements:

• Black bottle, a red label with the image of a tough female.
• Tag line: “It terminates germs and dirt”.
• Television ad: A little boy can use the Germinator to clean gravy better than a strong man, because he has the Germinator product.

Chris’s Team: Octi-kleen

Key Elements:

• Orange bottle and pastel label with the image of a smiling octopus.
• Tag line “Eight hands are better than two”.
• Television ad: A mum can clean the house like an octopus, very quickly, as if she had eight hands.

The scope of this task was very unrealistic, the teams had to create product packaging and two supporting ads.  Unfortunately this Advertising task only asked the teams to consider a very limited scope of deliverables, and did not portray an integrated marketing cycle.  Although product packaging is important and most products, especially new products, benefit from television and radio ads, neither team discussed a strategy, a potential target demographic or even a corporate image as a whole.

As well, neither team developed a great brand name. Some of the questions to be asked when developing a strong brand name (Cow and Baack, 1997 p. 40):

• What are the brand’s most compelling benefits?
• What emotions are elicited by the brand either during or after the purchase?
• What one word best describes the brand?
• What is important to consumers in the purchase of the product?

Neither team discussed the relative benefits of the brand in comparison with others, or even attempted to portray an amount of competitive advantage. The Germinator had packaging that made it appear as though it belonged in another aisle, but neither team had any idea of what their brand equity would be.

Neither team actually considered the needs or desires of the target audience. Considering that the majority of consumers who purchase cleaning products are female, neither product or campaign targeted females specifically. Alex’s Germinator was a very masculine looking product, and Chris’s Octi-kleen television advert was very old fashioned and focused on the man of the house relaxing while the wife cleans up with her eight hands.

Lord Sugar certainly imposed on the team that there is much more to an effective campaign than making a snappy commercial. As he used the Titanic movie as an example, it won many Oscars but it was a poor advertisement for a cruise ship.

Ultimately, the critical failure of the Germinator was that the goal of the use of the product in the television commercial was to clean gravy, whose core function does not match with the name Germinator. Considering that a product is the most critical component of a campaign, the Germinator name was ill suited to a product that removed stains and removed kitchen grime.

Overall we were very disappointed by the efforts and results of the advertising task!

Last week the teams competed in a challenge to sell London fashion to the masses. The teams first met with designers to select which lines to purchase and sell in a popular Manchester shopping centre. There were multiple components to this challenge:

• Selecting a clothing line best suited to sell in a Manchester shopping centre.
• Pitching to the clothing designers to win the opportunity to sell their brand.
• Setting up and running a retail environment in the mall, including choosing an optimal promotional space in a public area.
• Selling the items to shoppers.

From the beginning, Paloma’s team lost the bid to the clothier that was most suited to sell in such an environment. The coveted brand had a lower price point and designs that would attract young tweens and teens. The designer felt that Liz’s team were more enthusiastic and would better represent the brand than Paloma’s team.

Paloma’s team chose to represent a brand making clothing made of recycling fabrics, which had a much higher price point than the more audience appropriate clothing that Liz’s team had purchased. Interestingly enough, the challenge was to see which team had had the largest sales figures at the end of the day, not to see which team was most profitable.

In the end, Liz’s team won. A few reasons for this win, as Lord Sugar identified in the boardroom, were:

• Securing the brand of choice, which was most suited to the shopping centre’s demographic.
• Selling a greater volume of items.
• Having a price point that was much lower than Paloma’s team.

Although Liz’s team in the end had larger sales figures, Paloma’s team did an excellent job of utilising the resources that were available to them.  Knowing that the shopping center had their own television channel which was broadcast from a large screen in a high traffic area, Alex contacted the centre’s administration and secured a promotional placement that ran three to four times per hour. Even with Alex’s quick thinking, Paloma still insisted on bringing him into the boardroom, and it did not redeem him for picking a less than ideal promotional space.

Lord Sugar ultimately fired Paloma because she was the losing project manager, and also for digging herself into a hole by being unnecessarily negative towards her teammates in the boardroom.

In this episode we did see evidence of strategic thinking on behalf of the contestants. In choosing which clothing lines to represent, the teams did rely heavily on their perception of a typical shopping centre customer in Manchester.

What should the teams have done differently? Well, even if none of the candidates had strong retail experience, they would have certainly all spent some time in shopping centres. Both teams struggled a bit on what their stores visual identify would be, and neither did a great job of making their space inviting. Yes Stella did act as a model in this task and even waved to passers by from the shop window, but both teams did a fairly mediocre job in terms of execution and presentation. This is the Apprentice, shouldn’t our expectations be a little higher?

For a start, Team MTD would have created greater visuals and would have created a better shopping environment for audiences no matter the price point. With Team MTD’s marketing agency experience, they/we would have nailed the pitch perfectly and won the ability to represent the brand of their choice.

The next blog will feature analysis on the Advertising challenge that the teams completed this week.

Stay tuned!

While taking a mental break from the Apprentice over the weekend, I read that Hugh Hefner is re-opening London’s Playboy Club. In case the Playboy-merchandised store on Oxford Street wasn’t enough to fulfill your Playboy needs, the revival of the London establishment will be located in Mayfair and is scheduled to open in 2011.

My primary experience with the Playboy brand stems from the popular reality show “Girls Next Door”. The show first became popular in 2005 and launched the celebrity careers of Holly, Bridget and Kendra, Hef’s girlfriend’s. The reality show offered a glimpse into both the celebrity filled lives of the bunnies, Hefner himself, and also a glimpse into their curfews, schedules and professional development. Bridget for example, hosted a radio show while Holly was trained in editorial and post-production work. Now that the girls have grown up, Kendra is married with a child and now has her own reality show and Hef has moved on to new girlfriends including the Shannon twins plus blond bombshell Crystal Harris.

Although Hef and the Playboy brand doesn’t offer the same appeal it once did, it still has amassed incredible awareness, and is undoubtedly a topic of household discussion at certain dinner tables.

The opening of the London restaurant, casino, and lounge extravaganza comes at a time when the company must need to diversify. Increasing levels of free online porn, and the appeal of a busty lady no longer racks in the cash it once did. The success of the club will be heavily dependent on the celebrity intake, and we certainly know some ex-bunnies who will guaranteed red carpet places.

There were certainly be a plethora of tourists to fill the seats, but we will have to wait and see how many stars show up on opening night. The opening of the venue certainly comes at a time when people are taking fewer vacations and there will be ample unemployed curvy ladies from all parts of the world vying to dress up as a bunny.

I wonder if the event organisers will let Hugh glide across the red carpet on a mobility scooter?

Did you spot the mystery word last week? We certainly did. Melissa made up the word… manoeuverment.

Another entertaining part of last week’s Apprentice was watching the After Show hosted by Dara O’Briain. Featuring three experts, Grace Dent, Julie Meyer and Richard Herring, the panel interviewed the latest victim of Lord Sugar’s Apprentice, Melissa.

As the chameleon walked on stage, a second glance was required to determine whether the person featured on stage was actually the Melissa from the Apprentice.  Her hair may seem more mainstream, but her hot pink cut-out dress doesn’t scream professionalism, or comfortability (another of her make-believe words).

The After Show was surprisingly smart and actually did examine the challenges from a business perspective, among others.

In this episode the teams were required to meet with budding inventors to pick products to represent. Having known which high street buyers Lord Sugar had already arranged for them to meet, the teams would have to match the new products to the demographics of the companies. The end goal of the task was to ultimately bring in the largest sales figures, with each team member being accountable for their personal sales as well as the teams combined figures.

Some of the notable highlights include when Stuart made a critical mistake by being very rude to the inventor of one of the star products, the baby jumper that turned colour as the baby’s temperature reaches concerning heights. As both teams were interested in representing this product, especially since one of the buyers was a large online children’s shop, Stuart’s team were extremely unfortunate to have lost this opportunity to the opposing team.

A second memorable moment was the heated discussion by three of the lovely ladies who could not reach a consensus on who should receive credit for an order that was yet to be finalised, just meters away from the awaiting client.

In the end, although both teams seemed to impress Lord Sugar with their achieved sales figures, and one team was put onto the chopping block. Liz saved her team with an extremely impressive order for the baby jumpers, and Melissa’s team were critical of her embarrassingly low sales figures, considering her self-proclaimed pitching genius.

As the weeks progress, it seems as though the most effective way to remain a contestant on the Apprentice is to make an effort, be pleasant, and to not be project manager. Although easier said than done, we do not anticipate seeing Stuart for much longer considering his aggressive nature. Team MTD have only the highest levels of professionalism and business savvy, and would have approached this task most strategically.

We were pleased to hear the teams discussing target markets and audience profiles and we were also impressed when the man-sculpting tee was pitched to adult-style shops in Soho. The teams actually did make some consideration for the audiences of the shops, however there was of course room for improvement.  We would love to see the footage that didn’t make the hour long edit.

Where can we sign up to be contestants for next season?

When I was in business school and we were deciding on our areas of specialisation, I am certain that not one person in my graduating class would have told you they wanted to go into sales. In our classes, we talked about overall business and corporate strategy, and we believed that we would be doing business strategy, which of course in actual fact we would not. No one really told us the truth, whether they feared we would run away and finish another degree or perhaps they really did know that for the most part our lives would be spent coordinating, not strategising.

I believe that many of my fellow graduates (myself included) could have benefited from a solid foundation in selling. Selling is a core function of many businesses and a tangible, highly lucrative area to excel in. Yes, excelling at accounting beneficial, but being really good at selling is an art form that will bring both personal and organisational success.

Now that I’m in the real world, I can fully appreciate the fact that selling is the ugly duckling of marketing. It was far from the cool thing to do in school, but now I can fully appreciate how important it is to many core business functions. I am now envious of my fellow peers who have mastered not only the confidence but the expertise of selling.

As a mini-lesson in sales or selling in particular (one that I should have gotten years ago), the three functions that you should be primarily concerned with are:

1.     Being absolutely clear about what is for sale.

2.     Being absolutely clear about how the product or service benefits the potential purchaser.

3.     Being absolutely clear about why the potential purchaser should buy from you rather than somebody else.

Once branding and competitive advantage have been established, most integrated marketing activities are driven by the desire to increase a variety of factors such as awareness, familiarity and likeness and in the end are all efforts used in a strategic way to increase long term sales and long term business profitability.

Although consumers are constantly bombarded by information and are constantly targeted, it paramount that your customer understands what it is you are selling, that they understand how your product or service will benefit them, and that they understand why they should buy from you rather than somebody else. There are various means to communicate these principles and you can be as subtle or as persuasive as is appropriate, but in the end it comes down to communicating the points listed above in the most effective way for your audience.

Did you catch last week’s episode of The Apprentice? If you did, I would imagine that you would agree with us that it was somewhat of a joke. Neither Apollo nor Synergy performed well, no matter how experienced these professionals are.

The episode opened with the teams meeting at Fortnum and Mason, and were tasked with selling bakery goods to large clients and to individual customers around London. In addition to selling the baked goods, the teams also had to produce all of the goods that were to be sold.

One team was led by Melissa, and she was chosen as project manager due to her background in managing food distribution and food production. The second team was led by Shibby, a surgeon and business owner. As the episode progressed, Melissa’s team fumbled and were almost unable to provide prices to the large clients, while Shibby’s team were much more comfortable in the pitches but ultimately fell short on the production side. Christopher, the military expert led Melissa’s team in the bakery, ensuring that the operations were as efficient as possible.

There were a few critical aspects to this task. The first aspect was pitching and negotiating with large clients. The second aspect of this task was in managing production and ensuring that the team could produce the supply to meet the demand. The third aspect of this challenge was to sell the product around the streets of London. Melissa’s team ultimately won by a small margin, even with her poor performance in the pitches. Both teams did an acceptable job selling on the streets, both teams had strengths and weaknesses in terms of their pitches to large clients, but Melissa’s team won in the end , thanks to efficient production in the capable hands of Christopher.

If Team MTD were competing in Lord Sugar’s Apprentice, we would have been more focused on strategy. Now strategy in this instance is less about the product to sell, and more about the flow of the business. The competitive advantage of the team that ultimately won wasn’t in their image or their sales technique but was about being more efficient as a team. The winning team had far better internal communication, resulting in lower costs by actually meeting production targets. Shibby was a poor project manager, unable to produce the committed amounts and was ultimately fired.

As we expressed in last week’s Apprentice blog, hopefully the challenges will be more encompassing in the coming weeks. The tasks are variably testing different skill sets as follows:

Episode 1 – Bangers: teamwork, deciding on an appropriate product for a certain market, selling.

Episode 2 – Beach Accessory: Innovation, creativity, pitching/speaking.

Episode 3 – Bakery: Pitching/speaking, production, communication and selling.

The tasks are getting more complex, and we are looking forward to applying the MTD process to future Apprentice tasks. We’re holding our breath for the branding, integrated marketing and advertising tasks!

Have you heard of the recent Gap logo saga? The original navy boxed Gap imagery had been pulled from the website in place of a newer more modern logo when the company was hit with a backlash. Whether you agree or not, Gap have rescinded their rebrand plans and are going back to their old Gap imagery.

I would like to think that the decision makers at Gap are smart enough to only move forward with a change in imagery after some careful consideration and with the help of supporting research, but who can tell? The reversal did provide the company with a great deal of publicity this week that they wouldn’t have received otherwise and it demonstrated that many of their customers are still passionate about their brand.

Whether you agree or not with their change in direction, the company is being very quick to respond to criticisms and as the Twitter account shows, (I can’t tell if it’s an official Twitter response or the clever and quick workings of a fan) they are certainly laughing at themselves.

The press release issued by Gap Inc. acknowledges that the company neglected to consult their passionate online community and says that moving forward it will engage with the audience before making future rebranding decisions.

Based on the MTD approach, whether the new logo was created internally or externally, the decision did not consider customer relationships and customer perception, some of the very important branding considerations. How has this move alienated or supported their brand champions?

The decision by Gap to revert back to their old logo also demonstrates that internally the company must not have been fully committed to this change. When companies and organisations rebrand there will always be bloggers that respond negatively but rarely do such large companies like Gap release new imagery only to then revoke it due to customer feedback.

The release and revoke of the new imagery have sparked some entertaining Twitter conversation, although it is difficult to tell whether it is coming officially from Gap or from clever and interested fans.

Here’s a snapshot of the humour:

I wonder why Gap decided to change the imagery in the first place?

In addition to being humorous, Gap’s (potential) use of the light-hearted Twitter as a PR tool is very clever, if they in fact came up with it. Perhaps they should move some people from communications into research!

Teams Apollo and Synergy were sent to Heathrow’s Terminal 5 in the beginning of episode 2, not to go on vacation but to design an original beach accessory that holidaymakers would want to take on a beach vacation. The goal of the challenge is to create this original beach accessory and then sell the product to large chains.

Although pressed for time, it seems that the teams didn’t consider strategy much at all throughout their latest challenge. Instead of considering the various markets, or even the target audiences of the high street chains, it seems as though the teams considered the audience only after a product idea was suggested.

Although the challenge was business oriented, the teams used little strategy, forethought or even common sense in tackling this challenge. Team Synergy ultimately was able to create a product that could potentially sell, with one buyer placing an order for 100 items while team Apollo’s internal communications completely destroyed any chance of consensus, despite the team leader’s early attempt to control the group discussion.

Some of the weaknesses of the teams identified in this episode were the lack of constructive group communication and the lack of foresight in thinking the product through. In team Apollo, the chosen product was determined by the individual who shouted the loudest, which was ultimately discovered in the boardroom.

This was the first episode that we participated in the live discussion on Twitter. Using the #theapprentice hashtag, we contributed to conversations which every week can be followed by searching #theapprentice on Twitter.

As you can see in this diagram, there were many people tweeting about the episode while watching the show who included a hashtag (used for tracking discussions and trending topics) in their post.

This graph is also useful in determining which hashtag to use moving forward. We chose to use #theapprentice last night in our conversations because that is the hashtag used by the official Twitter account of BBC’s The Apprentice. According to the diagram above however, more of the audience were contributing by using #apprentice rather than #theapprentice, so from now on we’ll have to engage in the larger #apprentice conversation.

Unfortunately we could not give great comparison between the methods and process followed by either Apprentice team, because there simply seemed to be none whatsoever. Instead of choosing a target market, the teams created a product that could potentially serve a wide range of audiences and in the end had no interest from the buyers at all.

Team MTD at the very least would have given more thought and consideration to the target market and commerciality of the products rather than moving forward with the loudest idea. Hopefully the teams of the Apprentice will show more consideration to strategy moving forward, so then we could have more to write about!