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!

Welcome to planet Jargon. I know you’ve always been taught that we live on Earth, but that in fact is no longer the case. The almighty Oxford Dictionary has opened up, and some influential terms have been added. What do jargon and the Oxford Dictionary have to do with each other?

Lexicography. Although I intended to write a ridiculous sounding word, and then tell you it’s not a word, after a quick Google search, I was wrong (The Oxford Dictionary describes lexicography as “the activity or occupation of compiling dictionaries”).

The language that we use, that companies use whether in communicating to clients or in naming their products or services can have a significant impact on how persuasive we are, or how your clients speak about your products.

This summer between your staycations, you may have missed jargon generators in the news. I have two favorites, The Bullshit Generator and the Web-Economy Generator, which is extra juicy. In case you missed it, these simple tools take a verb, an adjective and a noun randomly from each column and put them together to create a so-called marketing phrase. The generators are a clever idea, and a good way to vent your past marketing bitterness.

Some of my favorite buzz-sayings from the Web-Economy Generator:

• Reinvent e-business convergence
• Strategise virtual relationships
• Exploit interactive users
• Synergise one-to-one ROI

These websites are perhaps holding a mirror up to society and saying a few things:

1. You’re using words that we don’t understand to describe processes and concepts that we really don’t care about.
2. Because we don’t understand what you’re saying, it must mean that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

I’m sure a few comics got a great deal of fresh summer material on the wave of the press attention that these phrase generators have been getting this summer. I also think that they do serve a purpose, maybe even to make us think about some of the terms we are using with our clients, and with people who didn’t study business from a textbook.

The following list is a selection of the words recently added to the third edition of the Oxford Dictionary, let’s take a look at some of the words recently added.

• Staycation
• Microblogging
• Social Media
• Netbook
• Dictionary Attack
• Paywall
• Tweetup
• LBD (This means Little Black Dress!)

Even from this selection, our level of familiarity and comfort with these words and terms varies greatly. Where do these words come from? A word like staycation was most likely either first used by someone in the travel, marketing or media industries. There are digital related words like paywall, microblogging and tweetup that if you said in series “a paywall microblogging tweetup”? could confuse even the most astute tuned-in digital guru.

Although the jargon generators are making comedic what happens every day, and are being extremely harsh, if you don’t understand a word or a meaning, the words no longer matter. As someone not very technical, I would be as equally confused with a techno speak generator, as I’m sure many people would be.

The words that we create and that then stick become real words. From a business or competitive advantage perspective, having your product name become the noun for the product or product category is quite an achievement. The Oxford Dictionary has added Netbook to mean a small computer, when this word is in fact derived from the product name Netbook, which is a small computer by Psion.

Twitter related words are now a part of our every day language (I am attending a tweetup this Thursday evening), and what a feat it is for Twitter, who is actually a company just like lots of others, whose terms have been so widely spread and generalized that are now officially words in the dictionary, literally.

Although by no means do I mean to compare the meaningless phrases that come out of the jargon generators to the pop-culture corporate terms that have now been added to the dictionary, but I do want to stress the importance of remembering your audience, whomever you are communicating to. What is their level of comfort with the language you are using? How effective is your presentation going to be, no matter how impressive-sounding it is, if no one in the audience really understands what you’re saying?

No one can deny Facebook’s global dominance, but you may know a little about the other F word in social media, Foursquare.

The other less popular F word, Foursquare has been gaining popularity for a few years, but Facebook’s new Places feature will challenge Foursquare to attract new users and create true differentiation between themselves and their other F word competitor.

TechCrunch noted that 20% of Foursquare users are currently having their “check-ins” automatically updated on their Facebook feed, increasing the collaboration opportunities for any organisations currently on engaging with their audiences Facebook.

Who exactly uses Foursquare? According to Quantcast, in the US the Foursquare audience is 58% male, with 33% from 18-34 and 25% from 35-49. 82% of US users are caucasian and 65% have a college or graduate degree. Although UK stats haven’t yet surfaced, Foursquare is being harnessed by small businesses in the UK interesting ways.  In one example, a tea room in Brighton held the first “swarm” party, where 50 people gathered together, and had to check in online while physically being in that location to unlock the “swarm” badge. The tea room saw more than 250 mentions in social media in the next 24 hours. The real life Sims game allows you to collect various badges for checking in under various circumstances and completing challenges.

What does this mean for your brand? If your brand personality is fun, adventurous and cutting edge, then it’s only appropriate that you make the most of this complimentary social environment. More importantly, if your customers are wandering around your towns and cities and are on foursquare, make sure they don’t miss you.

Firstly, if you have a real life location, whether an office or storefront, it’s never too early to claim your foursquare real estate. After verification, within 10 minutes you can have a simple, no-frills Foursquare presence where your engaged customers can “check-in”. This maintenance free claim ensures that you’re not missing out if your audience is battling their friends for the most badges. If after a few weeks or months you notice that your customers are “checking-in”, then you can explore other opportunities, perhaps offer specials or create challenges for your clients and customers, but do not let these suggestions intimidate you. Stop reading this right now, grab a jpeg of your logo or a picture of your storefront, and go register for Foursquare!

If you haven’t read the succinct news report offered by The Guardian’s Media Monkey this week, following their alluring offer of an interview with the illusive Banksy, I suggest you read on….Even when interviewed, this great English graffiti artist maintains quasi-anonymity….

Banksy; painting a False Picture – The Guardian Guide offered readers an interview on Saturday with famously reclusive street artist Banksy, who shared his thoughts on Rolf Harris, Top Gear’s Stig and his ambition to paint a “giant comedy cock” on the walls of the Guide if he ever broke into its offices. If only. As the Guardian’s readers’ editor said today: “An interview purporting to be with Banksy in last Saturday’s Guide (One last thing … , 18 July, page 98, the Guide) was, it transpires, conducted with someone impersonating the graffiti artist. We apologise to Banksy for this error and for any offence and inconvenience caused.”