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Episode 6
There's No I in Team … But There is in FIRED!
When I wrote my commentary for the fourth installment of The Apprentice 3 I was critical of both teams for jumping directly to creative execution without first analyzing the target market. Well, it seems one team learned from that mistake and one team did not.
What seem like no-brainer steps in the process: interviewing the client, determining the target audience and testing ideas against the target are often overlooked in the heat of the battle. After all, the creative execution is the fun part! Congratulations to our college grads who not only sourced some valuable information from the experts at Sony PlayStation2, but also went the next step to get some advice from members of the target market.
Advertising without strategy is just art. Net Worth fell into this common trap. While their graffiti ad was well designed and nicely executed it did not communicate PlayStation2's brand attributes or Gran Turismo 4's product attributes. Isn't it interesting that one of the focus group member's comments was that it looked like every other piece of graffiti art in the neighborhood and wouldn't compel him to purchase the product or even think of PS2? And, on a side note, you may want to consult with the client before changing their tagline.
Meanwhile, Magna's ad was consistent with the brand right down to the ubiquitous E for Everybody symbol, which turned out to be a unique selling point for one focus group member. The other thing we finally started to see over at Magna was some team chemistry and cooperation! Another overused word - synergy, was at work here. The whole was indeed greater than the sum of the parts. The idea of cash was suggested by a guy from the neighborhood, it was then related to the team by the project manager Alex. Then Bren of all people came up with the idea of a fist full of cash with a PS2 logo ring. Finally, the graffiti artist executed the concept flawlessly! Brilliant! It seemed like throughout the process the various team members were contributing their thoughts and Alex, a good leader, was listening! I wonder why this never happened when Michael was on the team … hmmm.
So, at the end of the day Net Worth's mistakes were obvious. Equally obvious was that, barring a major boardroom blunder, Tara was toast. Tara made the same mistake as Kristen two weeks ago. She marginalized her teammates, promoted her own ideas, took all of the credit and, when the project failed, had nobody to blame but herself. Having said that, she had a better finished product than many PM's before her but the way the competition works somebody's gonna get FIRED!
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