Stuff you can’t live without
After watching the train wreck served up on The Apprentice tonight, I have to ask if any of these contestants watched any of the previous shows. Let’s start with the obvious, you never want to be the first project manager. Statistically your odds aren’t very good. The first people fired are almost always the PMs.
If you saw The Apprentice today, you know Pontiac starts taking orders for the Solstice tomorrow. Sign me up! Sure, maybe I’m biased. I spent 18 years working for General Motors. I’ve heard some insider information about this new roadster. None of that would matter anyway. Even a blind man couldn’t miss the beautiful curves of this gem. I’ve been planning to part with my 1991 Alfa Romeo Spider this summer and I’m searching for a suitable replacement. Pontiac definitely has a winner. I went on-line tonight and got an official early order ID. I’ll be heading to the dealer tomorrow afternoon to see if that number lets me place an order.
The official Apprentice recap provides detailed blow-by-blow of episode 7 while Andris Pone provides an interesting personality analysis in The Apprentice Blog: Episode 7: Miniature Golf. I’d rather weigh in on where the teams could have done more to promote their golf courses.
This week’s task was tough. Artwork is very subjective. None of these candidates are artists. How can they pick a winner? I can only fault them for failing to work together as a team and for thinking too small (again). I can’t say that I could have picked a better artist and lead a team to victory, but I certainly would have pushed the idea further than any of the other contestants.
Alex The Entrepreneur writes that he likes to watch The Apprentice because, like me, he finds himself thinking of so many alternatives to their lame decisions on the show.
Once again the kids are asked to invent a business for a day on the Feb 17th show. They have $5000 to work with and the winner is based on revenue, NOT profit. I am mystified. This is so simple, it’s dumb. Psst, hey buddy, pay $4000 to come into my trailer and I’ll give you a $5000 plasma TV. Boom, one customer, and $4000 revenue that easily blows away $900 earned by selling manicures. One big ticket item might be hard to move. How about a crate full of iPod minis for $200 each instead of the typical $250?
Gina’s RantSpot About The Apprentice
Gina has a nice summary of the Feb 10th episode of The Apprentice. Read that first if you didn’t see the show.
I honestly believe that the Street Smarts team (”Net Worth”) had the winning Dove ad and simply lost on the execution. The initial concept was funny but the director, Kristen, totally lost it. John should have scripted the whole thing and stayed on the set. Bren’s idea for Magna’s commercial was so bad on so many levels, I don’t even need to go into it.
The last episode of The Apprentice featured one of many tasks that required creating buzz. I’m dumbfounded that nobody leveraged the internet to do that job. I can go to Google, search for “blog apprentice” and churn up over 250,000 hits. Why wasn’t anybody on those blogs posting comments the night before, urging people to come out to their events? Why limit it geographically to a park in NYC? How about a 1 day, worldwide contest? Did anybody call newspapers and TV stations? Honestly I think they could have gotten a bigger turn out just by walking down the street saying, we’re filming The Apprentice over there today. Why give away anything at all? Put the money into entertainment and advertising.
I have to say, I just love watching [The Apprentice][2]. I guess it’s because I love to analyze things and I like trying to solve tough problems. Today is no exception.
In the most recent episode, the teams were given a $75,000 budget to devise and execute a marketing campaign for Nestle Taster’s Choice Coffee. The Donald urged the teams to think big. I think both teams came up short.