A little belated but I was able to catch up on the latest Apprentice episode. The task this time around was that teams had to create a Kodak storefront experience in an effort to re-launch its company’s product and image. A real interesting part to the task is that there would be secret shoppers that would visit each storefront where they would then evaluate the experiences produced by both teams. Very similar to what many companies do to help with their daily operations. The project manager for RockSolid was Sinbad and for team Tenacity it was Maria Kanellis.
I was kind of surprised that it was a Kodak related task since we have seen this company featured many times before. The TV spots must be working for them. Maybe it was just the video editing, but the show sure made Sinbad and Cyndi Lauper sure look silly. Sinbad looked like he was just a terrible communicator and Cyndi Lauper appeared as if she was technically incompetent such as asking how one uses the Kodak camera.
Team Tenacity’s idea was to use a wrestling ring concept where people can enter a ring with a championship belt while getting their pictures taken with Kodak products. Beforehand the public would enter into a red carpet type of setup as if they were a movie star of sort. Essentially, it’s to make people feel great and special. As well, Maria decided to get people with her charity involved in the task as well.
For RockSolid their concept was a little more simple as they wanted to use their celebrity status. The room was organized into sections where people could take photos with the celebrities and the area was designed with their respected themed sport/interest. For example, with Darryl Strawberry he had various baseball gear around him while Bret Michaels had a setting surrounded by music gear and instruments. While the women opted to print the photos onsite where people could walk away with a physical copy the men opted to give people a card that had a website address and people could go there to retrieve the photos instead.
Both of the secret shoppers didn’t seem too impressed with either team as both of them ran into trouble. The men appeared to have a host problem where there was no real direction for the visitors. As a result, people pretty much had to guide themselves when they got in. For the women they ran into technical difficulties such as the power going out and it took people a longtime to get their photos.
The Kodak executives then gave their deliberations. It seemed that the biggest sore thumb that stood out was that the men simply weren’t trying to sell the products at all. Instead, they were simply presenting it. As well, both secret shoppers complained that they never got a card that told them how to get their photos online when it came to team RockSolid’s storefront. Those appeared to be a huge factor and as a result the women won.
I wasn’t really surprised on the firing as Sinbad was pretty much placed into a corner in regards to his ability to manage people and the fact that he was the project manager. What was surprising was that it seemed so evident that Trump kept trying to lure people into making Sinbad sound bad too. In the end, Sinbad was fired. I guess the thing that stood out for me is that these scenarios can show you how dependent a company can be when it comes to the opinion of people like a secret shopper. From a business point of view it can be kind of risky as you are essentially trusting them 100% to be your eyes and ears.