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September 28, 2004

The Apprentice 2: Pamela gets in touch with her inner bitch

Landed from SFO attending the Web 2.0 conference just in time for the show. At Starbucks during the show I ran into Mark Cuban and we talked about his show The Benefactor. He is happy with how it is being received. It only took him a month to film it all versus over 2.5 months for The Donald and The Apprentice. Mark was as happy and bubbly as ever enjoying all the playing around that he gets to do now. I asked him if he has another season planned and he said he wasn't sure. Whatever happens, I know Mark will be having fun.

This week we got TWO marketing Tie-ins. The meet up was at the UPS warehouse, and the challenge was to sell a product for 12 minutes on QVC. As with last week, the producers put up front a comment from The Donald which turned out to be the key issue in the task: Price is important. The teams had to choose a product and pitch it for 12 minutes on QVC. I don't like staging the key issue like this. It makes it too easy to figure out who will win/loose. STOP DOING THIS DONALD.

As I had predicted last week, there was a team re-org. And to no surprise, Donald put Pamela over with the Apex to "whip them into shape". I predict disaster.

So Mosaic picked their team leader, by drawing straws (again). I can't even remember who it was, because he didn't do jack! Kelly and Raj were the stand-outs in the process. The men picked a grill to sell (very manly again). Kelly wanted a high price, Raj wanted a price under $70. I would have personally gone with the under $70 price I think. The missing facts (missing for the audience anyway) were price history for similar products. I am sure QVC has this kind of thing. Also gross margin was not even discussed! The task was measured on gross revenue, not gross margin. That makes the pricing decision much easier and the task less interesting. Come on Donald, make these things real! We also didn't see the process which led them to the DeLonghi Panini grill. Which products did they consider and discard? That would have been interesting. I didn't like the selection because the product is a nice to have and crowds up the kitchen. How many people really want another small appliance on their counter? Anyway, the men put together a pitch and sold their product for 12 minutes pushing 252 grill, way below their goal of 800. Not really much drama here, although they were ready for a loss.

All the drama was (again) over at Apex. Pamela had the thankless task of uniting a team of women who hate each other and have lost every test yet. Her style was to become ultra bitch and just ride roughshod over everyone. This is in stark contrast to other Apex leaders who took the more participatory style. It was refreshing to see, but unfortunately had the predicted effect. Unhappy team members and dissatisfied people. Probably MORE division rather than uniting. While watching, I was trying to figure out what management style would bring this motley team together. I think the key is going to be to get them to focus on the EXTERNAL enemy: Mosaic. On every task, they have been focused internally on the individual performances and the interworkings of each person. They need to unite against a common outside enemy to take the focus off themselves. Obviously this didn't happen this week. Apex chose a whacky "new" product, "It Works", a cleaning block for removing markers and crayons from walls and stuff. They priced it too high (Pamela) for a product that customers were not used to buying. You had to convince people to try a new way of cleaning something with a new product that they never heard of. That behavior change would have been easier to swallow with a sub $20 price. When you get over that, the customer has to think harder about taking the risk. Pamela put Stacy on the legal stuff and Stacy did what lawyers do, overlawyered the process. She spent too much time with the QVC counsel pointing out potential liability issues. Pamela was right to point out that Stacy's job was to get the QVC guy to a yes. I bet Stacy is a litigator not a corporate counsel. Maria and Sandy self-selected to be the on-screen presenters. Sandy was a natural and Maria was a disaster. Too fast talking and too many gestures for TV. From the control room it was blatantly obvious. Pamela called down on the radio to Ivana to tell Sandy she did a great job and Maria that they needed to talk. This conversation was heard by Sandy and Maria, OOPS! Pamela was being the bulldog in a situation where she should have used kit gloves. Anyway the presentation went on air and for the first couple of minutes they didn't sell squat. They had to demonstrate the product for half their 12 minutes before orders started coming in. By the way, the computer system that QVC has to track calls, orders, etc. is WAY COOL! After a last minute push helped by a caller, Apex ended up selling 659 sets of cleaning blocks at $27.23 each for a total of $17,944.57.

In the boardroom, the stats showed that Mosaic had won by just over $10! Wow, a quick calculation in my head had the men loosing, but this was close! Ouch! Pamela the Warton/Harvard grad had failed. So who should go to the boardroom: Pamela, Maria, and Stacy. I picked the line-up right! So into the boardroom. I pick Pamela to get fired since her management style, while decisive, led to wrong decisions and didn't work for her team. During the "who should get fired" stage Maria and Stacy fell back on a well used line for Apex: We failed due to poor leadership. Every week the team has ganged up on their leader and not taken any individual responsibility gang up on Stacie J. causing The Donald to say "hey this is the only thing those two agree on. They don't even like each othershow turned from reality (ok, it is a stretch) to PURE TV. The Donald said "go get everybody" in order to flush out the Stacie J. problem. It was a surprise boardroom move and I am sure well planned by the producers. Only theatrix. I thought it was irrelevant to the business decision. So all the women come down and every one of them says Stacie J. scares them and makes them affraid. Mostly around the magic 8 ball incident two shows ago! So the Donald fires her because her whole team is against her and he "can't have any loose canons." I know she is not right for a finalist, but at least let her fail on her own merits during a task instead of submitting to the will of the masses.

The ultra-conspiracy theory put forward by Michelle (at Ignition) was that the producers arranged that to fire Stacie J. while putting the blame on the team. At the start of the show, it was clear to me that the producers had gotten Stacie J. to be the Omarosa of this year, but maybe they thought she was now a liability. By having the team gang up on her and the donald saying "I had no choice" then he gets out of the blame. Hummm...

HOW AM I DOING?

So I am 1 for 3, batting 333%.

I am sticking with Elizabeth as a finalist, she was much better than Trump gave her credit for.

Pamela, Ivana, or Mary should be one of the next to go.

My choices for top finalists are still:

Raj
Jennifer
Elizabeth

My choices for most likely to go sooner rather than later are:

Jennifer C. - you can't become a billionaire by mimicking how a real one eats shrimp cocktail!
Andy - Too young and already deemed a "project" by The Donald. May be kept for a few episodes for entertainment, but not long for this life.
Stacy - Too mousy.
Pamela - too impersonal, cold and very unavailable as a team member and leader
Ivana - God I wish they could recruit some Venture Capitalists with operating experience instead of eggheads. She is an organizational disaster.
Mary - her fumble on the printing pricing puts her at risk. She has some gumption though and may come back.

Those on the move up:

Kevin - Although he has no real business experience, he did well as team leader this week and showed some chops.
Andy - Still on the short list to go, but he had the big idea of giving away $1M for the men and they ran with it.

Posted by Martin at September 28, 2004 3:46 PM

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