Even though we’ve been complaining about Stuart Baggs these past few weeks, we are glad he’s still a contestant on the show, even if for the only purpose of contrasting his optimism and motivation against Laura’s sourness and negativity.

This week the challenge was all about crisps. The teams had to create two new flavours of crisps and sell them to the German market. In order to successfully complete a challenge such as this, market research is imperative, both in terms of crisp flavours and the German market.

At the start of the task the project managers remained in England to manage the production of the crisps while the teams went to Germany for market research and to set up meetings with suppliers. It seems that both teams had already set their flavours before even thinking about market research, at least that’s what the editing on Stella’s team led us to believe.

The show featured a heated phone call between Joanna and Stella, where Joanna had just finished interviewing Germans in shops and asking them what kind of crisps they would like, and what kind of food they enjoy. At this point Stella and her team had already chosen to proceed with a “British Foods” theme, and Stella seemed to be upset that Joanna was telling her that they were proceeding in the wrong direction.

Chris’s team on the other hand decided to go into the German market with German crisp flavours. This was a great idea, until the buyers tasted the crisps and indicated that they tasted nothing like their German food counterparts.

In the end Stella’s team won and Chris’s team were sent to the boardroom. Although Chris the project manager had been in the bottom three and in the loosing team for the past few challenges, Lord sugar sent military and operations expert Christopher home. Lord Sugar said that although everyone liked Christopher, he didn’t have an entrepreneurial spark, and was sent home.

Whether the teams had any control over the situation or not, it was ridiculous for the teams to choose crisp flavours and then undertake market research. The teams communication styles was also very inconsistent, with Joanna and Laura speaking very quickly and not being sensitive whatsoever to the German buyers while Stuart actually made an effort, which resulted (much to our dismay) in his name in German, Herr Baggs, trending on Twitter during the airing.

Do you think any of the candidates that are left have an Entrepreneurial spark?

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!

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!

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.

Welcome to our new mini-series of blogs where we look at each episode of Lord Sugar’s The Apprentice and discuss the differences between how we, the integrated marketing agency Marketing Team Direct (or MTD for short), would have tackled the challenge using our effective approach.

In case you missed the first episode of this sixth series, the new candidates meet at midnight and they embark on a seventeen-hour overnight journey to buy, make and sell three kinds of sausages. They have to purchase the ingredients from a London meat market, have to create sausages in their own sausage factory, then sell their sausages to make a maximum profit.

The first key difference between teams Synergy (the men’s team) and Apollo (the women’s team) is that Synergy is going for a 40% meat, low cost, low quality sausage while Apollo is going for a 70% meat gourmet sausage which has higher associated costs and will ultimately sell for higher prices. Appropriately, Apollo sells in upscale Leadenhall Market, while Synergy opt for lower prices at Portobello Market.

MTD’s first step in working with clients is immersion, where we understand the vision, values and culture, market dynamics, customer relationships, current positioning and propositions. Both Apprentice teams did follow a similar process for a short while, as they considered who their target audiences were in their respective markets. As both groups are only in the bangers market for one short day, many of the immersion aspects will be more applicable to late Apprentice episodes when the teams work with real, established companies.

Interestingly enough, the show did not feature any of the teams discussing their competition. What are the market stalls next to them selling? The teams do consider how their packages of bangers will look to customers, and teams do realise the value of having the sausages cooking at the time, sizzling, having an appealing smell and being able to offer potential customers a taste. Using the grill becomes especially important when a local restaurant owner would like to taste the sausages before making a bulk purchase.

Team Synergy also missed a valuable opportunity in selling to those managing the other stalls. Neither team thought of other channels or outlets in which to sell sausages other than aimlessly running to businesses and restaurants, and finally neither team identified a story that they could rally behind and communicate to customers.

If team MTD were competing on the Apprentice, we would be looking for competitive advantage, not only in relation to our nemesis team but from the competing market stalls. How could we make a sausage so much more?

Very much unlike the environment created on the television show, we would insist on taking more that seventeen hours to learn about our new client and understand their place in the market to deliver true competitive advantage that brings increased sales and profitability for much longer than one day.

Unfortunately we do not all retreat to a fancy large West End townhouse at the end of the day, but we do get great satisfaction from the work that we do. Hope you will enjoy our upcoming blog posts on the Apprentice, and follow our live Tweets on how the teams are handling the competitive advantage!

In an effort to sustain sales levels, Harley Davidson are now officially targeting women specifically. Of course they have always had loyal female followers, but they are now targeting the thirty-to-fifty something female demographic who have high levels of disposable income.

After hearing last week that the Milwaukee family home of the brand will be staying open after unions voted to accept a seven year pay freeze and move from full time to more part time and seasonal employment, Harley Davidson are being frugal and are saving money through user generated promotional content.

In contrast to one of the brand’s recent extremely edgy, masculine commercials appropriately called “The Cheater”, here is the winning video from one of Harley Davidson’s newest targeted demographic.

Harley Davidson are being extremely smart in harnessing the devotion and cult culture that the brand have already established, and getting those same customers to create content for them in their spare time. The user generated content may not have high production value, is admittedly slightly on the cheesy side and may not appeal to the wider older woman demographic. It does however belong to a collection of content that increases top of mind awareness and fuels increased customer passion for the brand as they and their troupe of supporters vote for their favorite video.

I read in a blog that the brand have started to send out rings specially designed by one of the founders’ grand daughters to new and loyal female customers, but I couldn’t find any official word on that. The cost of a ring is a small price to pay for user-generated content and the development of long term brand champions.

Apple’s release of the new, smaller Apple TV at the new, affordable price of £99 is scary. It’s only scary for me because now I’ll probably have to get one.

I must confess that I do purchase music, movies and too many telly shows on iTunes. My current telly transfer involves syncing the media with my iPod touch, and then using the television as an external monitor. I choose to enjoy the media on telly so that I can use my computer at the same time and multitask.

I could be classified as an early adopter, but certainly not for a product like the Apple TV. This new price is not one that will shy anyone away- it does not carry the same level of exclusivity of other Apple products and because it doesn’t fit in your pocket, it won’t make people drool while riding the tube.

Perhaps with the growing population of iPhone, iPod Touch, iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle owners, and with their growing need to consume the media they are purchasing, Apple are looking to new ways to satisfy this audience. The Apple TV could be strategically targeted to this audience to compliment their already impressive collection of Apple goods.

Are Apple secretly hoping that once you have an iPhone and an Apple TV that you will invest in a MacBook Pro for yourself and perhaps an iMac for the kids? This new lower priced strategy won’t be off-putting to the early adopters, and it certainly may draw more customers into the arguably upscale iTunes music market.

This new sub-business strategy will also strengthen the relationship between existing iTunes customers and the company, as music and media consumers find new ways to appreciate their purchases. Appreciating their purchases for example on a big screen, the once ultimate status symbol. The Apple TV also provides (limited) storage space for when your very large HD telly collection uses up all the space on your wanna-be Apple computer.

This may sound like a product review, but it’s very interesting that the price of this product has dropped so dramatically recently. Surely the cost to produce the item hasn’t fallen 100%, so Apple are clearly deciding to pitch the Apple TV to a new demographic. Competitive Advantage?

It seems from Steve O’Hear’s  “Is Anyone Out There?” article posted on TechCrunch last week, that yes a lot of companies now know about the importance of social media and everyone understands that using social media to engage with audiences is beneficial. The article notes that “90% of UK tech companies featured had a presence on two or more social networks”, but of all these brands on Twitter, “43% of brands had never replied to a single tweet”.

What’s keeping all these companies from optimising their Twitter and Facebook initiatives? The new expectation of customer service is that within a few hours of complaining online, someone perky and powerful from the company will respond, and offer to solve your problem. I am actually impressed that a lot of companies are doing this, and I have had a few personal examples. I was delighted the first few times my queries or concerns were addressed on Twitter (within a few hours), and was very satisfied that the companies were listening my concerns. Moving forward, these few companies have raised the bar for customer service, and for anyone who has filed a complaint on Twitter, this is now the standard.

The author noted that many companies are responding to complaints on Twitter, but are not actually following through with fixing customer complaints and concerns. It seems as though the team charged with responding to social queries have no power, although in many cases customers will feel satisfied that their concerns were simply acknowledged.

That the team of interns charged with responding to social queries actually have no power, although in the end customers may feel better about their experience and about the brand, simply because someone was listening.

Why are companies not responding to follower’s tweets, as the article suggests? There are two reasons. Firstly, no one has time to log on to the Twitter account, and the social engagement queries are not deemed priorities. Secondly, the benefits of engaging with audiences in social media are not fully understood. Yes, Twitter is a useful means of sending targeted messages to an engaged audience in a one-way stream. Twitter is also useful in gaining sales leads, networking and engaging with customers. If someone called your office with inquiries about your business, would someone return their call? Yes. Is there a difference?

Have you ever had any experiences with customer service in social networks? I once read that in terms of customer satisfaction from hotel stays, if the customer or client has a bad experience and the hotel goes above and beyond to correct the problem, that the customer is more likely to book and stay at that hotel again than if there hadn’t been an issue in the first place. Will the same be true for complaints vented in social cyberspace?