Branding drags down Apprentice
The most recent episode of The Apprentice features the contestants plugging singer Shania Twain's new perfume.
It's always gratifying to be proved right, and last Thursday's Apprentice confirmed straightaway what I'd said in my previous week's column — that show compere and svengali Donald Trump had become a proselytizer for branding.
For a man whose fortune is built on real estate, the fourth season of his prime-time audition for a new executive has shied away from real-estate challenges in favour of branding exercises and showbiz challenges.
And so when he enthusiastically began Thursday's show with a paean to branding and its centrality to the business of selling Trump, I had the satisfaction of being proven right with what probably anyone who reads a business magazine or lives in Manhattan knows already. That this has resulted in a dreary sameness to the past couple of seasons, based on the nebulous language and methods of marketing, as opposed to the concrete task of buying and selling something real, is just one of the problems with The Apprentice.
The task on Thursday night was to try and drum up interest in a new fragrance named after Canadian new country pinup Shania Twain, made by Coty. Both teams were given yards of "wrapping" — the printed adhesive film we find pasted all over buses, streetcars, vans and transit shelters by ad firms.
The challenge also pitted the most likely finalists against each other — the brilliant Randal versus the ballsy Alla.
While the material might be space age, both teams look resolutely backwards and hit the streets hawking — they both hire teams of streetwalkers with sandwich boards to cajole pedestrians into using their cellphones to call for Shania info. They even look into buying bullhorns, but when Alla's team reserves every one on the island of Manhattan, Randal and Rebecca scoop them with a swift little lie, a sly and deceitful move that impresses Trump no end.
Master of logic Randal organizes their army of hawkers with military precision, blanketing Manhattan and reserving his Spanish speakers for Spanish Harlem. Alla, unfortunately, forces Felicia to make do with a quarter of Randal's hawkers, spending most of their budget on Adam's brainstorm — wrapped horse-drawn carriages. The branded buggies look dreadful, and Felicia's hawkers hector and cajole passersby. They lose by the slimmest margin (five calls) and hit the boardroom.
Trump is unwilling to consider cutting Alla — her potential has been plain from the beginning — and lets the axe swing drunkenly between Adam and Felicia before firing Adam, who can at least console himself with his 15 minutes of fame as the most famous male virgin in the United States.
http://www.metronews.ca/entertainme...il.asp?id=12466
-Chris