Episode 5. Making and branding pet food. Pitching to an expert panel. The team with the best pitch and advert wins. Glen Ward was the team leader for Venture. Vincent Disneur was team leader for Logic. Venture win. Vincent Disneur, Natasha Scribbins and Ellie Reed end up as the final three in the boardroom. Ellie Reed is Fired. Then Vincent Disneur is fired.
It was only last week at the beginning of the Beauty Treatment task that Lord Sugar stated all firing decisions will be based solely on a candidate’s performance during a particular task. Yet in this task he fired Ellie Reed because he had not heard enough from her over the five weeks and he needed to start thinking about who he was going to go into business with? From my experience I can pretty much guarantee that this was a firing for the ‘benefit’ of the show. It’s always the case that if you are not an ‘in the face’ candidate, and therefore are not likely to get much TV time, it does not matter how much ability you have, you simply will not progress. And let’s not forget it’s the producers who provide the real feedback to Lord Sugar.
It also came it came as no surprise to me that Vincent Disneur was fired. Sure it was well staged from an entertainment point of view, but I think it’s always been clear that Lord Sugar does not like people who to him appear, as Del Boy would say…debonair! The justification for firing Vincent Disneur was that he seemed to be over reliant on Jim Eastwood, but surely if you know someone in your team has particular strengths you should rightly be able to rely on those without being penalised. It doesn’t mean that you are in awe of that person. It just means, that as a manager, you are able to identify and therefore utilise the different strengths of your team. Anyone in a real business environment would say the same; clearly The Apprentice and Lord Sugar don’t see it that way.
In terms of which team should have won, I can understand why Lord Sugar chose Venture. Although the weaker advert, according to the experts their product Catsize was consistent, well targeted and very well thought through from start to finish. This compared to Logic, who the experts felt had the better advert but whose concept of “one food for every dog” was fundamentally flawed because individual owners might be insulted by the product. You can’t doubt the logic (pun not intended). There is not much that you can do to a product or service that does not meet the needs or wants of its intended target. However if the product or service does meet the needs of its intended market, the marketing can be improved. The fundamental is having a viable product. From that perspective, the right team won.
This task was about the best pitch and advertisement – not necessarily about the product that can be most profitable, so it was fundamental that the marketing strategy be correct. Perhaps if Logic had targeted their Every Dog product at places likes Vets, charitable animal hospitals, and other similar places where many dogs are cared for at the same time, and where it may not be viable or cost effective for these organisations to buy different foods for each dog, their pitch may have been more successful. Perhaps, the market would have been much smaller, but the marketing strategy would have been viable and hence the pitch.
The other valuable lesson is the benefit of using focus groups. Provided they are appropriately selected to represent an adequate cross section of your target market, they can provide valuable information about your target market. They can help anyone thinking of either launching new products or services or looking to improve their existing offerings. They are easy to put together and only in rare circumstances would a business would go against the advice of a focus group. However, that said, I know of several entrepreneurs who have gone against the thoughts of their target market and done extremely well by building a demand for their product or service. James Caan is one that is famed for saying that he achieved his success through “observing the masses and doing the opposite”. It’s not an easy choice because it takes time and effort to educate users to create demand – but nothing is impossible if you have the ability, desire and belief in what you are doing.
