Wednesday, April 29, 2009
How do you become a celebrity...#1
Am I the only man in America who thinks Omarosa "4 names" is really not attractive???
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Learning from The Donald
So, yes...I do watch The Celebrity Apprentice...oh, shut up it's just entertainment! And yes I know the show is played out and nobody watches it anymore much less blogs about it. But this weeks' episode made me think about how business is done in the real world so...here's my two cents.
For those of you who didn't watch (haa..) the teams were tasked by The Donald and executives from the All detergent Company to create a "viral" video for the web. Clint Black's team did what may have been the worst single production in the history of advertisement. It was so bad that it's not even worth the time it would take to make fun of it. Essentially the guy uses All to jerk-off so he doesn't have to sleep with his super hot wife..WTF?? Melissa's team on the other hand did something extremely funny and worthy of passing along to your friends. Jesse James, being washed by a bunch of midgets (YES!!! MIDGETS you PC A-holes!!) dressed up like Little bottles of All Small and Mighty, and then getting pissed off about being exploited at the end of the video. It was edgy, funny, a little off..everything that makes people say "OMG you have to see this fucking video, it's hysterical", and sending it along to friends. The two stuffed shirt All executives who wouldn't know viral if it fell out of the sky and crawled up their pants thought both videos missed the mark of responding to their demographic of 25 year old women who happen to be mom's. (I guess you lose your edge at 25 if you have kids??)
The Donald promptly fired one person from each team, neither of which firing had anything to do with the performance of that person (Khloe and T-Boz) in creating the video. (There's a way to really get the most out of your employees, fire people for the equivalent of not liking their hairstyle!). Anyway, so here's my problem with all of this; not withstanding that Donny Deutsch would probably disagree with what I'm going to say, corporations make this mistake all the time; they look at popular and emergent culture to see what's happening in the real world and they try to co-opt messages or techniques on the edge to give their products more street-cred. "You know what we need to sell more All? Some of that 'Viral' stuff! Let's go buy us some of that!" This was set up to be a failure from the very beginning. Corporate America always wants cool, hip or edgy without taking the risks that are required to really get there. So they try to institutionalize the cool, hip or edgy thing, without understanding it or, if you ask me understanding their customers. Yes that's right I think most companies have a very poor handle on what their customers really want and I'll debate ANYONE on that issue.
So, when Melissa produces a really funny, slightly-to- moderately outrageous video that could become viral, those who don't understand what viral means, fall back on what they do know, traditional advertising methodologies and kill the project. This happens all the time in the real world to the tune of millions of wasted dollars. Trump just exploited All's stupidity for his own benefit..(Which is why I think he's a mad genius!).
The whole thing then crashed and burned into an absurd comedy of incompetence and self-serving bullshit. Not a way to run a business. Melissa had a great product and she knew it but she was unwilling to stand up for it and truly accept responsibility: Note to Apprentice competitors; In the real world accepting responsibility doesn't mean just saying it was my fault, it means also suffering the consequences of responsibility and not letting your team take the fall for your decisions. Melissa should not have brought anyone into the boardroom with her. She should have stood up for her work and her team and convinced Donald to fire two people from Clint's team. That would have been really simple for The Donald: Clint simply had to go and the fact that he didn't is a clear lack of leadership on Donald's part. In fact, Clint's project management skills were so non-existent and the product so completely awful, he's the ONLY one that should have been fired this time around. Firing Khloe because she was absent due to her DUI conviction? I know, The Donald is holier than all of us but that's the kind of shit that gets you sued in the real world. OK, I've even bored myself with this entry!..see ya later!
For those of you who didn't watch (haa..) the teams were tasked by The Donald and executives from the All detergent Company to create a "viral" video for the web. Clint Black's team did what may have been the worst single production in the history of advertisement. It was so bad that it's not even worth the time it would take to make fun of it. Essentially the guy uses All to jerk-off so he doesn't have to sleep with his super hot wife..WTF?? Melissa's team on the other hand did something extremely funny and worthy of passing along to your friends. Jesse James, being washed by a bunch of midgets (YES!!! MIDGETS you PC A-holes!!) dressed up like Little bottles of All Small and Mighty, and then getting pissed off about being exploited at the end of the video. It was edgy, funny, a little off..everything that makes people say "OMG you have to see this fucking video, it's hysterical", and sending it along to friends. The two stuffed shirt All executives who wouldn't know viral if it fell out of the sky and crawled up their pants thought both videos missed the mark of responding to their demographic of 25 year old women who happen to be mom's. (I guess you lose your edge at 25 if you have kids??)
The Donald promptly fired one person from each team, neither of which firing had anything to do with the performance of that person (Khloe and T-Boz) in creating the video. (There's a way to really get the most out of your employees, fire people for the equivalent of not liking their hairstyle!). Anyway, so here's my problem with all of this; not withstanding that Donny Deutsch would probably disagree with what I'm going to say, corporations make this mistake all the time; they look at popular and emergent culture to see what's happening in the real world and they try to co-opt messages or techniques on the edge to give their products more street-cred. "You know what we need to sell more All? Some of that 'Viral' stuff! Let's go buy us some of that!" This was set up to be a failure from the very beginning. Corporate America always wants cool, hip or edgy without taking the risks that are required to really get there. So they try to institutionalize the cool, hip or edgy thing, without understanding it or, if you ask me understanding their customers. Yes that's right I think most companies have a very poor handle on what their customers really want and I'll debate ANYONE on that issue.
So, when Melissa produces a really funny, slightly-to- moderately outrageous video that could become viral, those who don't understand what viral means, fall back on what they do know, traditional advertising methodologies and kill the project. This happens all the time in the real world to the tune of millions of wasted dollars. Trump just exploited All's stupidity for his own benefit..(Which is why I think he's a mad genius!).
The whole thing then crashed and burned into an absurd comedy of incompetence and self-serving bullshit. Not a way to run a business. Melissa had a great product and she knew it but she was unwilling to stand up for it and truly accept responsibility: Note to Apprentice competitors; In the real world accepting responsibility doesn't mean just saying it was my fault, it means also suffering the consequences of responsibility and not letting your team take the fall for your decisions. Melissa should not have brought anyone into the boardroom with her. She should have stood up for her work and her team and convinced Donald to fire two people from Clint's team. That would have been really simple for The Donald: Clint simply had to go and the fact that he didn't is a clear lack of leadership on Donald's part. In fact, Clint's project management skills were so non-existent and the product so completely awful, he's the ONLY one that should have been fired this time around. Firing Khloe because she was absent due to her DUI conviction? I know, The Donald is holier than all of us but that's the kind of shit that gets you sued in the real world. OK, I've even bored myself with this entry!..see ya later!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)