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Blog posts tagged pitch
The Apprentice: the final
December 20, 2010
Missed the final episode? Catch up here.
The task
Stella and Chris have made it to the final and they have one last task to complete — to create a new premium alcoholic drink brand, film a commercial and pitch it to industry bigwigs at a swanky do at the Hurlingham Club.
It’s a tough challenge. So it’s lucky, then, that Lord Sugar has invited back a few of the contestants to help them out.
Or is it? Stella is all smiles. “I’m so glad to have you all back,” she tells her team. Chris is not quite so welcoming — “I’m willing to work with you again,” he says as their first meeting kicks off.
So how do they fare?
Chris Bates
The proposition: A rum-based drink designed to appeal to young professionals that enjoy cocktails such as Mojitos.
The name: Prism
The strap: It reflects every side of you.
The branding: A dramatic three-sided pointy bottle that looks like an over-sized perfume bottle.
The taste: Three ingredients — rum, pomegranate and aromatic bitters.
The colour: Pink.
The advertisement: Three people walk into a bar. It sounds like a joke — sadly it is!
The pitch: Chris works hard to liven up his droning voice. Jamie coaches him and promises to give his delivery va va voom. It works.
Stella English
The proposition: A modern bourbon drink aimed at young professionals
The name: A last minute stroke of genius from Stella — Urbon
The strap: Urbon — the new way to drink Bourbon.
The branding: A tall, slim bottle redolent of a supermarket oil or vinegar bottle from the Christmas gift aisle.
The taste: At the lab, Shibby gives an involuntary shudder after he tastes it but decides to go with it anyway. Lord Sugar calls it “pungent”. Stella admits that it is “over-spiced”.
The colour: Amber.
The advertisement: Two guys and two girls in a cool bar. The girls persuade the boys to try Urbon. To be honest, they don’t look convinced. Cheesy.
The pitch: Polished and with some surprising off-the-cuff humour. When one expert questions whether rural consumers will buy it, Stella says, “I’m hoping to move out to the country if this goes well” and gets a big laugh.
The verdict from the experts
Prism: Good name, clever concept, great bottle, hideous colour, poor ad.
Urbon: Great name, clever concept, dodgy bottle, horrible taste, poor ad.
But who cares about the drinks? It’s the people that count.
Stella: Meticulous, experienced, well-liked, a good leader, cool as a cucumber, impressive career progression.
Chris: Incredibly articulate, intelligent, calm under pressure, voice like a low-flying bomber, inexperienced.
The verdict?
Stella wins. But Lord Sugar predicts a bright future for Chris.
Quote of the week
“I didn’t come here to win the competition. I don’t care about that. I came to get the job and I think you’d be mad not to employ me.” Stella to Lord Sugar shortly before he hires her.
Missed this episode? Watch it on BBC iPlayer.
The Apprentice: The guru is gone
November 15, 2010
This week’s Apprentice saw the two teams rudely awakened by Lord Sugar who arrived early at the candidates’ house. So early, in fact, that some of them were still in bed, and appeared downstairs before a Peer of the Realm, still in their night attire!
The task this week was to promote, through advertising, a new brand of household cleaning liquid, by producing new packaging, as well as a TV and radio ad.
Step up to the plate this week’s Project Managers – the battle of the northern giants! In the blue corner from Cheshire, Chris Farrell, selected because he was the only team member not to have been a PM up until now. Good selection criterion!
And in the red corner, from Manchester, the marketing guru that is Alex Epstein. Hot-foot from his roaring success in the fashion-selling project in the Trafford Centre, the previous week, Alex, whose quote of last week was “Be different. When everyone is zigging, you should zag”, saw this as his opportunity to shine! (Get it? Cleaning liquid – shine!)
Given support from one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, Chris’s team produced a nice pastel-shaded bottle, a passing reference to an octopus, and an advert that came straight out of the fifties. Talk about cheesy.
Meanwhile, Alex — “if I were an apple pie, it would have oranges inside” — brainstormed with his team, and finally selected a name and concept that he said wouldn’t work, and which he didn’t believe in!
The final product came in a black bottle with a red top and was called ‘Germ-n-ator’. Judging by the design, it should have been called “engine oil”.
So now to the exciting bit – making the advert. Why is it that every year when this task is set, it seems to bring out yet two more budding Arthur J. Rank characters, who on this occasion were Chris & Chris – a bit like Saatchi & Saatchi!
After scripting and filming, each team had to pitch the new product to a selected audience of advertising industry gurus – you know, mates of Alex “I am a guru” Epstein.
The ads were shown and the teams departed to allow the audience to tell Lord Sugar what they thought of them. Which was, it turned out, “not a lot”!
Back in the boardroom, Lord Sugar announced that Chris’s team had triumphed – but it was not so much that they had won, but that the others had lost. This is known as the “best of a bad bunch syndrome”.
The final showdown saw Alex pitted against the rest of his team. And so it was that Alex “yes Lord Sugar, no Lord Sugar, three bags full Lord Sugar Epstein, brought Chris and Sandeesh into the boardroom with him. Yes, Sandeesh, making her second appearance in two weeks, even though she was credited with having done a good performance at the industry pitch.
Lord Sugar soon dispatched Sandeesh back to the house, because he, along with millions watching the programme, couldn’t believe what Alex had done.
After further deliberation with Karren Brady and Nick, who really ought to have his own show sometime — The Many Faces of Nick Hewer, Lord Sugar pointed the finger. Alex, you’re fired!
And Alex’s parting words? “Thank you Lord Sugar, it has been a pleasure to meet you, and likewise Nick and Karen.”
The guru is gone!
Adrian Wilkinson is the owner of marketing consultancy Image and Profile
A lesson from the Den
November 16, 2007
What does Dragon’s Den tell us about the world of small business? Not a great deal if you view it solely as entertainment. After all, this is reality TV, and reality TV’s stock-in-trade is the ritual humiliation of hapless members of the public. There are times when I find it excruciating to watch yet another hopeful squirming under the unforgiving scrutiny of the Dragons, their dreams visibly crumbling as Duncan Bannatyne spits a mocking question about sales projections that he knows they cannot answer. It’s like watching someone being skewered and roasted over an open fire.
Thankfully, there’s more to it than this. Dragon’s Den is not actually a game – these are serious investors with real cash to put into real businesses, and they’re not going to throw it away on a whim. Harsh as it is, their scrutiny has a purpose; they have to be sure that the risk is going to be worthwhile.
I know we’re supposed to boo and hiss at the Dragons whenever they grunt the dreaded “I’m out”, but I can’t help siding with them when I’m watching the show. Most of the entrepreneurs are so ill-prepared for their ordeal that they don’t deserve to be given any money to develop a business. This staggers me. There’s no secret here - they know the format, they know what sort of questions they’ll be asked and they know what’s going to happen if they can’t answer them.
Granted, it’s a nervewracking business and that’s going to affect their ability to recall information quickly and easily. Even so, if you’re seriously asking for £150,000 to open five retail outlets selling baseball caps in five major cities, you really should be able to demonstrate some sort of understanding of leases, health and safety regulations and employment law, as well as offering realistic cashflow forecasts, sales projections and some sort of basic marketing plan.
Unfortunately, too few of the applicants standing in the Den seem to grasp the fundamentals of running a sound business. They’ve got where they are on a wing and a prayer and a following wind. But the Dragons are hard-nosed business folk who don’t invest in dreamers – unless they can see a healthy profit at the end of it.
And I suppose that’s what makes the show compelling. We see, vividly, the collision between an entrepreneur’s dream and the realities of the marketplace. Every business reaches this point eventually, some sooner than others. If the entrepreneur has done their homework, they stand a good chance of getting over the wall, or around it or under it or even smashing straight through it. Their dream continues - a little tarnished maybe, but in a much better state to survive in a competitive environment.
What the Dragons offer is a reality check. It has to be harsh. It’s not easy to get a business up and running, but it is possible. And when it happens, nobody is more pleased than the Dragons who, after all, just want to invest in good businesses.
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