The Apprentice "Send in the Crowns"
Just how much buzz can $50,000 buy?
There's been a definite logical progression to the tasks. Develop a product. Sell it. Market it.
This entire episode was constructed around the boardroom scene. 90% of what we were shown was the back story for the boardroom. Perhaps because this episode was shortened a bit (it was actually less than 60 minutes to make room for an extra-large E.R. and they've been showing us 90 or 120 minute episodes lately, even this Saturday will only be 60 minutes, but it will still manage an extra 15 minutes of boadroom), the editing was obviously built around the tasks that failed and would be brought up in the boardroom.
This is actually the first time I felt that the tasks were pretty big. They had the budget to really do something, and they had to pull a lot of elements together to make it work. Not that this is the first time this happened, I'm sure a lot of the previous (including season 1) tasks were pretty hefty, but the editing this season reflects that. Usually we're only shown the meetings, the parts of the show where everyone is together working on something, deciding on something, or arguing. This time, perhaps because of NBC's increased budget for camera crews and vans, we're being shown individual tasks as well, such as Stacie J. picking up the toothpaste tubes with Jennifer C.
The editing this time around, also made the men look extraordinarily good. Yes they didn't get the insurance for the contest, but they still managed to pull off a contest. What we didn't see was any of the infighting or anxiety they may have had with regards to how they were going to do this, and how they came up with the $5,000 giveaway figure, or even how they hired the street performers. Even the individual comments were pretty positive. John saying he thought Kevin would be a good leader, Pamela disparaging Andy's ideas (again, yet this is the 2nd time they chose Andy's idea). Even on the men's team, the anxiety was articulated by a woman.
Whenever you don't see what goes on behind the scenes, and you're just shown the end result, the people behind it end up looking like they pulled off a miracle.
I do have to wonder about Andy. It seems to me that right now his youth is working to his advantage. All of the other team members seem more hesitant to step forward, perhaps because they've been in the work force for so long and they know that they need to be conservative in the ideas they present. Andy is willing to champion his idea in a way that nobody else seems to be willing to do.
It also looks like the women, early on, decided on a way of doing things. They hold frequent meetings in between tasks, and each time a project manager is chosen, she starts by telling the team what her management style is. This could actually be a hindrance, because once you state something publicly, you're bound to do it that way. 1 Ivana was brought in to the boardroom for precisely the reason she stated at the beginning of the episode - she would rule by consensus. Elizabeth was brought in for precisely the reason she stated - she assigns tasks and expects people to carry them out independently.
Then men can hold meetings and announce their management style as well, but we're not shown this. Maybe if they get pulled in to the boardroom next week we'll see more of how they structured things.
In the boardroom, for the second time in a row, someone was fired that didn't directly contribute to the failure at this task. During the taxicab ride, when the credits are rolling, a disclaimer flashes on the screen. "Trump and his associates consult with NBC on all firing decisions," or something like that - it was longer than that and flashed on the screen too quickly for me to read. This really makes me wonder about the sensationalist elements to the choices this season.
Whether or not Stacie J's actions during the first task were really that outrageous I don't know. What we saw was abnormal, but not schizophrenic. It seems that this week, the women's choice to make a concerted effort to name Stacie J. at every possible opportunity paid off.
Maria was visibly shaken as she stood up to open the door to call back all the women from her team. It almost seemed like she was ready to bow to Trump as she was leaving
Also, I noticed that Trump's speech was a voice over. We won't know what he really said about firing Stacie J.
Getting Things Done
Bill returns next episode. I still remember Bill carrying around a clip board at Planet Hollywood and at the golf course. While the teams are so large, and the focus is split amongst the team members so much that it's hard to tell what's going on with the individuals. The focus isn't even on the project manager much of the time right now, but on the individuals.
Still, I can't help thinking that if Maria had just written things down she'd remember to call the printer at 7am, and would be more likely to nail down a price. Bill would have double and triple checked everything.
As a project manager, too, it was Elizabeth's responsibility to ensure that all the tasks were being performed. All the other team members are still pretty much unknown variables that need to be tracked. Nobody, yet, has a track record of success. Just like with Kwame last season, he took Omarosa's word on everything and didn't want to follow up anything she did because it would make her look bad, Elizabeth didn't manage things as closely as they needed to be managed. She should have kept track of what everyone was doing and followed up with the vendors to ensure everything was on target.
As David Allen points out in his book, Getting Things Done, 2 you have to write everything down. Anything that isn't locked in your "trusted system" will become a lose end that could become a liability.
Write it down. Follow up on it. This goes double for the project manager.
Buzz
I just wrote an article about Buzz not more than 2 days ago. Buzz is a subtle thing. Unlike traditional marketing, it's not just running a commerical a thousand times to build brand identity. It's word of mouth advertising, which means you have to come up with something people will talk about.
Emmanual Rosen, author of The Anatomy of Buzz 3 defines buzz as "the sum of all comments about a certain product that are exchanged among people at any given time... Buzz is all the word of mouth about a brand. It's the aggregate of all person-to-person communication about a particular product, service, or company at any point in time." In a 1998 Newsweek article, they define it as "infectious chatter; genuine, street-level excitement about a hot new person, place or thing."
From a product marketing point of view, creating Buzz is about manipulating existing networks of communication. Taking a natural chain of events and trying to artificially stimulate, or recreate them.
Some of the best Buzz marketing campaigns I've seen involved doing things subtly, over a period of time. The marketing for the movie Backdraft involved a number of bus-stop posters with just a picture of flames and no words. What was that? People talked about it. Finally when posters started appearing with the title of the movie on them, they'd tell their friends that they'd found out what the mystery was. More recently, a detergent company did the same thing by putting up a series of ads telling us that "On average, Americans spend over 90% of their lives indoors," and that we needed to get back in to the dirt. It wasn't until 2 weeks later that the Wisk logo started appearing on the ads. Whenever you passed one, you couldn't help but comment on it to one of your friends. 4
Another company that makes soft drinks (the punch-box kind that kids take to school) wanted to introduce a sour flavor and had a contest for the best sour-face. Kids all across America competed and the best contestant from each state was flown to New York City, where they would be judged and a winner chosen. The winner would appear in commercials for the product. Proctor & Gamble is doing this too with their "Crest Whitening Expressions - Vanilla on The Apprentice boardroom challenge". 5 The person who comes up with the idea that generates the highest level of Buzz could win a trip to watch NBC's The Apprentice Final Live Show in New York, and stay at Trump Tower.
This is a great example of Buzz. tell your friends about the contest, it gives you an excuse to show up on talk shows (that's how I learned about the soft drink campaign), and getting the hosts of the show to make funny faces... well people might talk about that too.
In this light, doing something like putting toothpaste suds in the Hudson River (which has been done before - on St. Patrick's Day, some rivers run green... not that the Hudson river needs to be any more green than it already is, but it could use a good cleaning up and maybe the soapy suds will help...) doesn't seem like such a crazy idea. These are ideas on a grand scale, and they'll get people talking, but they would take time to execute.
I think both teams did admirably well in this task, coming up with something that would attract people, and get them talking about it afterwards. Washington Square Park and Union Square Park are high traffic area all times of day, and they managed to gather a good crowd.
Sam, from season one is writing commentary on each episode. 6 His idea, surprisingly, is pretty brilliant, though it would probably require some hefty licensing to pull off. Maybe he could do it in the park down there and plaster signs up all over pointing people to the event.
If I had been leading one of these teams, I would have headed down to Wall Street and created an Indian Bazaar two blocks long, serving food from the finest Indian restaurants in New York. Hire women to perform Indian dance routines and throw in a dozen free weekend trips to Trump's Taj Mahal in Atlantic City as part of the theme. New York businesspeople love Indian cuisine, and they would have been stuffing their faces with samosas, lamb curry and chicken tikka masala.
Now here's the essence of the marketing concept: distribute a toothbrush, bottle of Trump Ice and the Crest toothpaste with each Indian dish served. None of these people could return to work without using the toothpaste for fear of having horrendous breath. And they would feel so refreshed after a thorough brushing, they are sure to become hooked on the new Crest product. Additionally, Indian food is cheap, so this entire marketing campaign would have come in way under budget. The executives from Proctor & Gable would have enthusiastically embraced this concept... What do you think? Crazy or brilliant? I guarantee none of the folks on Apprentice I or II would have gone along with me.
Random Notes
The area where the team met in Trump Tower usually (during the afternoons and evenings I guess) houses a restaurant. It's a few blocks from where I used to work, and I used to go there regularly for lunch because of the outdoor gardens. It's a nice area with huge skylights and a three (or more?) story indoor waterfall. I actually saw Trump there one day with Miss America at a press conference.
Bradford Cohen did an interview with TVGuide.com and continued to defend his decision, stating that what he was doing was the honorable thing, and that he was trying to bring the team together. He continued to talk about how he and Trump are alike.
Mr. Trump is very much like myself in that once he locks onto an idea, he will not let go. He had the idea that what I did was a terrible mistake, and I had the idea that what I did was honorable. I guess in the future weeks, we'll see if that is what this team needed. 7
And continued to play up the fact that the boardrooms are 4 hours long, and we can't know all of what went on. Interestingly, during the episode, the women acknowledged that he was probably the best person on the team, and they'd have to figure out how to get by without him.
Of course, it goes without saying that the biggest buzz for Proctor & Gamble was an hour long prime-time TV show dedicated to their product. It's amazing how much buzz $100,000 can buy.
Gossip
Apparently, the men hired a homeless woman to help move boxes of Crest from the truck to their table. The woman ended up rolling around on the floor chanting "Crest Crest Crest" and had a seizure. The whole thing was caught on camera, and Carolyn berated them for their hiring choice, but this didn't make it on to the show.
Also, it looks like the Gelato was being sold at more than just two locations. Teams were spotted all the way over at the Jacob Javits Center (quite a long distance from where the teams were located). I wonder whether or not these were Stacie J's temps. 8
- Robert Cialdini - Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
According to this book, we'll behave in a manner consistent with what we've told others we are. - David Allen - Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
This book is sweeping the geek community like wildfire. I've been recommending it for almost a year now, it's a great method and lives up to the promise of the title. - Emmanual Rosen - The Anatomy of Buzz
This book was pretty good, but I liked The Tipping Point much better. - America Needs Dirt
This hilarious ad campaign definitely had me talking. - Crest Whitening Expressions - Vanilla on The Apprentice boardroom challenge
Think you can top the Apprentice guys? Submit your ideas to Crest. - Sam's Commentary
Look at that, each week Sam writes some commentary for each episode. - TVGuide.com: Apprentice's Bradford Undone
I wonder if these interviews are a requirement for appearing on the show, or if he's doing it for the money. - Apprentice 2 continues NYC filming... and challenge details continue to leak
Some gossip from when The Apprentice was filming.
page first created on Thursday, September 23, 2004
© Mark Wieczorek