The Apprentice 2009 - Final

That was a true marketing task - I got worried right at the start when Sir Alan said the two remaining candidates had to produce a marketing campaign, once again he was referring to a promotion campaign. After that, however, it became obvious that this was a true marketing programme. The candidates had to start off with a target market in mind, consider how to position their box of chocolates for that target. They had to consider the price to sell it at and then produce the promotional campaign (Sir Alan's marketing campaign) considering the place where they would sell the product. Both Yasmina and Kate produced great campaigns, although it certainly seemed that Kate had the better product, but well done to Yasmina on being hired.

So who is going to tell Sir Alan what marketing is all about?

As a side point, throughout five series of The Apprentice, I have not seen any real evidence of Sir Alan considering online marketing techniques (there was a brief shot showing that Yasmina had considered a website on the poster for Cocoa Electric in the final) so maybe I should try and enrol him on the CIM e-Marketing Award so he can learn more!

The Apprentice 2009

I wasn't intending to mention the programme The Apprentice again on here, but after watching this weeks episode - rebranding Margate - I changed my mind. Prior to this episode the series has had less misuse of the word marketing than previously, but in one episode that maybe changed. There were numerous mentions of "marketing" which should have been "promotion", this coming from the teams, Sir Alan and the clients of the activity - the agencies and the Margate councillors.

This type of use of the word marketing has come to be expected on the programme, but the real issue I had this week was that the task was billed as "rebranding". I don't think it was re-branding, the requirement of the teams was "repositioning". In deciding which market to appeal to they were creating a position for Margate in the holiday destination market, their slogans being designed (hopefully on their part) to make Margate attractive to their selected audience. Rebranding would have required a lot more work than could possibly be achieved in a two or three day activity - true rebranding would involve many of the businesses in Margate and could take two or three years to achieve.

As for the output of the losing team - trying to associate a half empty leaflet and a picture which required, rather than painted, a thousand words as a poster with "marketing" was a true crime against marketing.

The Apprentice

Having been meaning to write something here for ages I now have to write about a crime against marketing which I saw last week on the BBC series The Apprentice. When the losing team were in the boardroom they were questioned about their expenditure, a major part of which was their "marketing". This was picked up by Sir Alan Sugar who made much play of them overspending on marketing. The problem is it wasn't on marketing, it was on promotion - this being just one small part of marketing rather than the totality it was portrayed as.

It is this misconception of marketing which I find really frustrating and is one Sir Alan has made before in previous series. I suspect the understanding Sir Alan has of the word marketing relates to advertising and promotion rather than the much wider remit it should cover. I am sure however, that he is actually a pretty good marketer - anyone who has amassed a fortune of over £800m has to be pretty good at identifying customer needs and satisfying them profitably (Amstrad emailer maybe being an exception where he got things wrong). I just wish he would use the correct word and not keep perpetuating the common myth that all marketers do is advertising.

You can find more information about the series The Apprentice at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/apprentice/