First Person: Bathrobes Expose Marketing Reality of “The Apprentice”
There they were in Times Square, in terrycloth bathrobes and matching slippers, brandishing fliers. Six Apprentices, each trying desperately to help their team win at the task at hand. Their desperation drove one of the contestants, the oh-so-easy-to-despise Brent, to perform nearly obscene ritual dances right on the corner of 41st Street and 7th Avenue.
Brent, being portly and covered in perspiration, got the kind of eye-averting treatment usually reserved for the homeless. As Brent slammed his cell phone into his sandwich board like a toy monkey beating his drum, his folly was a microcosm of this doomed team, a team that not even the behind-the-scenes efforts of our company, Renegade Marketing Group, could save.
The second episode of season five of “The Apprentice” was touted in previews as “the biggest mess ever,” an epitaph that made the several of our Renegades who helped out on that particular show cringe. Our nondisclosure agreement with the show’s producers prevents me from providing specific details of our involvement. But that said, it is public record that two of us made cameo appearances, regrettably so brief that even my mother missed us. Fortunately she didn’t miss our signature “saws” that framed an interview with Pepi, leader of the losing team, Synergy. In retrospect, this was a truly ironic moniker for a team that exhibited as much synergy as the impressively lame 2006 New York Knicks.
Watching this show with acute trepidation, it occurred to me that there are lessons to be found in the rubble, gems of marketing wisdom buried amid this primetime detritus. Let’s start with the task, a seemingly straightforward one that required convincing consumers to send a specific text message. At the start of the episode, The Donald informed the combatants that their mission was to create a “text-messaging campaign to develop buzz for the Gillette Fusion razor.” The team that got “the most people to text-message the keyword” would be declared the winner.
Despite Mr. Trump’s disclaimer that he really wasn’t into text messaging, the task itself is not entirely farfetched. Marketers are testing mobile messaging as a means of communicating with a younger demographic. While less than 40% of all mobile-phone owners have yet to send a text, more than 60% of 18- to 27-year-olds have done so, according to research studies. Renegade conducted such a test for Panasonic Oxyride batteries last summer and generated higher-than-expected response rates for a concert giveaway. The trick (and no surprise to experienced marketers) is that you need a reasonable exchange of value with the consumer. In the Panasonic example, consumers were willing to send a text message in exchange for a chance to win a digital camera.
However, in “The Apprentice” text-messaging task, there was no reasonable exchange of value with the consumer. Unsuspecting pedestrians were asked to send a text message without a promise of anything in return. In fact, they simply got a wordy reply that referenced the Gillette Fusion. How this was supposed to generate buzz for Gillette is beyond comprehension. As one member of Team Gold Rush quickly surmised, this task was simply a numbers game: The more consumers they confronted, the more they could badger into sending a message, hardly the formula for generating buzz or any meaningful brand experience.
This is the critical moment where marketing reality and reality TV diverge. In marketing reality, most companies try to build meaningful relationships with target prospects. Recognizing that the “experience” can define the brand, more and more marketers are examining every aspect of their consumer interactions and are working hard to make them as enjoyable and rewarding as possible. Those that are succeeding, such as JetBlue, Chick-fil-A, and Costco, are enjoying unprecedented customer satisfaction rates. In TV reality, so-called marketing tasks are made-for-TV conflict starters, designed more like a game of Beat the Clock than Build Your Brand. It is any wonder that team Synergy resorted to bathrobes as a means of gaining attention?
Yes, let’s get back to the bathrobes. In the boardroom, impeccably tailored Ivanka Trump lambasted the losers, noting that the bathrobes were a bad idea that reflected poorly on the Gillette brand. Mr. Trump followed suit, arguing that he had no interest in seeing a man on the street in a robe.
Before I defend the bathrobes, let me assure you that Renegade was not behind this idea. Of course, had team Synergy won the numbers game, their use of attention-getting bathrobes would have been praised as a worthwhile and even inspired risk. Last time I checked, men do most of their shaving in the bathroom, a place that is comfortably associated with bathrobes. Team Synergy’s effort to bring the bathroom shaving experience to the streets was a brave, albeit meager, attempt to create a distinctive brand interaction. The simple addition of shaving cream to the men’s faces would have provided all the marketing logic needed to overcome Mr. Trump’s objection. Unfortunately no amount of creativity could save a team that was slow to the playing field and disorganized once they arrived.
In the end, both Synergy team leader Pepi and Brent-basher Stacy got fired. Their team lost by an embarrassing margin, opening themselves up to a barrage of 20/20 hindsight.
Fans of the show witnessed pitiable conflict, botched street theater, and triumphant winners getting to dress up a couple of down-on-their-luck New Yorkers. Gillette gained zap-proof exposure for its new razor, complete with the stirring endorsement of The Donald himself. Those of us behind the scenes got a barebones reality check that marketing is no game to be played by amateurs, bathrobe-clad or otherwise.
Drew Neisser is CEO/cofounder of New York-based agency Renegade Marketing Group. He owns one bathrobe and two DVRs allowing him to watch recordings of both “The Apprentice” and “24” in delayed yet fluffy comfort. Tell him what you think cuts through at [email protected].
