Marketing Apprentices
The Apprentice has become one of my guilty pleasures. Normally, "reality TV" gives me hives, but I find myself drawn to this show - enough to program my Tivo to record it, I admit. Why? Because if you've ever worked in corporate America, you've encountered people just like the contestants, and watching some of train wrecks in progress is pretty entertaining.
Each week the contestants are given a task. They're broken into two teams. One team wins and gets some fabulous outing as a prize; the other is summoned to "the boardroom," which has very strange dramatic lighting for a boardroom, and Donald Trump and his two minions (a quiet older gentleman and a woman who smirks a lot and seems basically evil at heart) interrogate them and then fire somebody. The rst of the contestants come back the next week for a new task.
Because Donald Trump is involved, the show has access to some major corporations (and talk about marketing opportunities for them!). A few weeks ago the task was to create an in-store catalog and marketing campaign for Levi Strauss. It's no secret that the cool factor of Levi jeans has been fading faster than demin in bleach, and so I'm sure they welcomed the chance to participate in this popular show.
For a marketer, this was an interesting one. The project was entirely marketing. There were clearly two components to the project: first, thinking through the strategy of the catalog and promotions, and second, actually creating it.
The interesting thing was how quickly the two teams diverged. One came up with a concept that reflected the marketing priorities, as explained to them by the CEO of Levi. The other went straight into the glitzy production part, complete with models gyrating in Levi jeans for the cameras while one of the contestants directed the shoot - directing, in this case, meaning saying things like "sex it up!" to the models.
Here's the kicker: the photo shoot director, who apart from not thinking like a marketer was a generally out of control personality (and who was fired at the end of the show) was described as a "marketing executive." You hear about the real-life occupations on these folks only in on-screen taglines, and there's clearly some puffery going on; one guy is a "software executive," and I would bet money that actually he's a salesman. Another is a "venture capitalist," and looks roughly old enough to be my nephew's babysitter, and I am guessing that this person makes PowerPoint presentations for a VC firm somewhere. But anyway... the marketer was the one who was out to lunch on this project.
The winning team, with no members with particular marketing experience, did some basic, smart things, and kept the execution simple; they used themselves as models and worked patiently with the Levi design team to create the final product.
Is there anything to learn here, other than the weaknesses of one particular "marketing executive" who got onto national television? Yes, I think so. It's a classic marketing lesson: don't get distracted by the execution. Or, as an ad agency owner I knew years ago in Boston put it, "keep the ideas clean and the comps messy." You're better off with a smart idea, explained with handwritten notes on a paper napkin, than with a brainless pitch on glitzy 6-color handouts.
In other words, don't sex it up till you know that you've found a real relationship.
Each week the contestants are given a task. They're broken into two teams. One team wins and gets some fabulous outing as a prize; the other is summoned to "the boardroom," which has very strange dramatic lighting for a boardroom, and Donald Trump and his two minions (a quiet older gentleman and a woman who smirks a lot and seems basically evil at heart) interrogate them and then fire somebody. The rst of the contestants come back the next week for a new task.
Because Donald Trump is involved, the show has access to some major corporations (and talk about marketing opportunities for them!). A few weeks ago the task was to create an in-store catalog and marketing campaign for Levi Strauss. It's no secret that the cool factor of Levi jeans has been fading faster than demin in bleach, and so I'm sure they welcomed the chance to participate in this popular show.
For a marketer, this was an interesting one. The project was entirely marketing. There were clearly two components to the project: first, thinking through the strategy of the catalog and promotions, and second, actually creating it.
The interesting thing was how quickly the two teams diverged. One came up with a concept that reflected the marketing priorities, as explained to them by the CEO of Levi. The other went straight into the glitzy production part, complete with models gyrating in Levi jeans for the cameras while one of the contestants directed the shoot - directing, in this case, meaning saying things like "sex it up!" to the models.
Here's the kicker: the photo shoot director, who apart from not thinking like a marketer was a generally out of control personality (and who was fired at the end of the show) was described as a "marketing executive." You hear about the real-life occupations on these folks only in on-screen taglines, and there's clearly some puffery going on; one guy is a "software executive," and I would bet money that actually he's a salesman. Another is a "venture capitalist," and looks roughly old enough to be my nephew's babysitter, and I am guessing that this person makes PowerPoint presentations for a VC firm somewhere. But anyway... the marketer was the one who was out to lunch on this project.
The winning team, with no members with particular marketing experience, did some basic, smart things, and kept the execution simple; they used themselves as models and worked patiently with the Levi design team to create the final product.
Is there anything to learn here, other than the weaknesses of one particular "marketing executive" who got onto national television? Yes, I think so. It's a classic marketing lesson: don't get distracted by the execution. Or, as an ad agency owner I knew years ago in Boston put it, "keep the ideas clean and the comps messy." You're better off with a smart idea, explained with handwritten notes on a paper napkin, than with a brainless pitch on glitzy 6-color handouts.
In other words, don't sex it up till you know that you've found a real relationship.
posted by John Whiteside at 11/27/2004 01:25:00 PM
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