Sorry – I was unclear. Yes, I understand that they paid $1k – but the website also got “free advertising” to the wider public because of its mention on a network TV show. The people editing the show would avoid giving such a mention on TV to other sites that they didn’t work with.
Oh! That makes perfect sense now. Yes, good point. 
Yeah lorene, but Carolyn looked HOT in the bridle salon!
A few random thoughts (I generally avoid coherent thoughts):
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A question: how should Apex have marketed this thing? If they couldn’t get the info out of that expert they hooked up with (did they even ask her, though?), how would a “civilian” know about that website e-mail service? I think they did the best they could. They took flyers to the most crowded areas of NYC they could think of. Not the worst idea given the alternatives. Advertising in NYC has to be pricey. This was where Sandy’s expertise payed off BIG! I thought the entire task was won and lost on advertising (as are most businesses). I didn’t think Sandy’s store was that much more impressive than Chris’s.
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Speaking of Sandy, it would have been interesting had her team lost. She would have been greatly diminished, but she could not have been fired. She had immunity. I thought at the end, Trump was going to offer her immunity next week in addition to Kelly. It would have been a classy gesture, and quite appropriate. She won the thing.
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The best thing Kelly did, other than let Sandy go, was to assign a tough task to Maria and Wes. I think I may disagree with the Scuba Ben lesson of the week for the first time. I think this week’s lesson, provided by the winning and losing PM, was to always have someone to fall on in case you fail! Kelly, had he lost, could have blamed Wes and Maria for failing to get the advertising right (boy that Maria is not big on nailing down details. I love the “I’m screwed” eye flutter!). Chris, smelling defeat, should have INSTANTLY set Ivana up for the chopping block. Kelly, knowing he would likely win, STILL had a scapegoat! That’s leadership. So Kelly created his scapegoat, and then pulled a Phil Jackson: rolled the ball out on the court and let Michael Jordan do his thing.
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If I had been Chris, and I was unable to find a scapegoat, I would have actually invoked the name “Michael Jordan.” I would have told Trump that a team that goes up against MJ usually loses. I would have tried to engage Trump in the idea that we may have lost, but with such overwhelming odds against us, that I believed we had “covered the spread.” This, of course, is only marginally better than Pamela’s tie, but it would have been something. Say it was an uphill battle and that I couldn’t identify one person who didn’t do well on this task. Then, I would have brought the ENTIRE team into the BR and praised every single one of them for their work on this task. I’d ask Trump not to judge anyone based solely on this task, but invite him to look at everyone’s past performance. Basically, try to misdirect the discussion away from the task at hand. I doubt it would have worked given Chris’s ill-timed speech last week, but it would have been the best tact possible.
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Jenn was not in danger. I also don’t see how she is flying under the radar. I think she has been EXCELLENT so far (plus, she looks HOT in next week’s preview). I think she WAS the best one this week in a losing effort and I think she deserved to be the one to leave, if one was chosen. But Trump saying he may have wanted to fire Jenn was just him rubbing salt in Chris’s wound. While he normally says he may have fired someone else that week, he generally has a reason. Ivana, Sandy and Chris himself have been brought up after leaving the BR as people he could have fired. This time there was no real reason. Jenn isn’t really skating. She has busted her (sweet) ass every week. Imagine that. Ivana dogging someone.
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I, too, thought the wreck would come into play. Did they leave a note? Was there a deductible? Was it reflected in the profits? Deductibles are a part of business.
*The diamond reward was interesting. Finally, some sweet prizes. You don’t get this from Bob Barker! (I just wanted to make a second Price Is Right reference). A question that I had was “Is Kelly Married?” Because Andy’s snippy comment was misplaced if Kelly is single. Just because he didn’t buy something for his mom, which was nice, does not mean he is a bad guy. However, if he is married, he is a dumbshit. I asked my wife what she would do if I was on a show like this and bought me a watch instead of bringing back a diamond for her. She was not amused. I asked her if I’d get bumped down to the Edmund Fitzgerald. Her, not a regular reader of the Mullinator rankings, again looked at me funny.
Damn you, Mullinator!
Agreed, but if I were on The Apprentice, I would never do anything by phone. A lot of businesses and individuals will be a lot more willing to help, even at a loss, if the person asking is followed by a group of cameras, sound technicians, and lighting execs. Hey, They would be fools to turn down the free publicity. I do believe that is why the outside bridal consultant (Bernadette?) was so willing to do so much for them.
Speaking of which, The Apprentice was pretty well known when this was filmed. Are there rules about what they can say when they call vendors. I imagine the response would be very different if someone called and said “we want you to bring your products to ourr one time expo” vs. “we want you to bring your products to our one time expo which will appear on NBC’s hugely popular series”.
Oh, I agree that it shouldn’t have been done by phone in the first place. Even ignoring the cameras, who would do business with a random person who called up over the phone? Especially high-end wedding dress designers. Too much like telemarketing or a scam.
Ok, here is what I want to know, and if I were Trump and aware of it at the time of the boardroom I would have summarily fired both Kevin and Chris.
When team Apex finally went out to talk to vendors (the smart thing to do; with cameramen in tow, the vendor will know something important is up) both Kevin and Chris were wearing shorts!
Yes. I thought that the replies Chris was getting (the bored-sounding, “No, thanks. I’m not interested.”) were the same tone as people replying to a telemarketer. Sexist or no, I agree that a female should have done the soliciting.
I didn’t think that comment helped Andy at all, either. Now he not only seems very young, but he seems like a whiny Mama’s boy. (Although I have to say, when MY boy grows up, I’d sure appreciate that type of present!)
By the way, is there anyone besides me who thinks of Snuffleupagus (sp?) from Sesame Street every time Andy is shown with downcast eyes and those impossibly long eyelashes?
Auntie Pam , I agree. Saying thank you isn’t going to get you un-fired, but it will sure go a long way towards making others think you went out with dignity.
Agreed that Chris should NOT have made those phone calls. He sounded like a telemarketer which I believe caused the vendors to not want to deal with him.
And is it wrong to say that I think Andy is just smoking hot? I liked how he wouldn’t just give up the PM to Kelly and that he bought his Mom a necklace. He’s my favorite player now!
The fact that the task was custom made for Sandy and her team is not really all that relevant to why Chris got fired. He gave up and thy would have lost to Mosiac even without Sandy. Two dresses? They spent, as far as I could tell almost no effort on marketing. Yes, the internet thing wasn’t obvious, but it wasn’t that far afield, either. Clearly, they put the marketing effort way way way on the back burner and that is why they lost. THe fact that the whole team pretty much failed to step up to get more focus on marketing, but ultimately, of course Chris failed.
Well, they could’ve Googled “wedding” and hit the top five results, then looked on each for a page like this one on theknot.com which lists, lo and behold, a local NYC number for their advertising department which they could’ve easily called to find out how the site could help. Just a thought. These are top-flight business people. They should have that much imagination. They’re allowed to use the web for tasks, this was a time when the web was ignored wrongly and they paid.
Indeed! They could’ve done a ton of stuff they obviously didn’t even consider, such as taking out even a small ad in any of the NY papers or POSTING fliers/signs (I see those Bride Expo signs *all over * the place where I live!) instead of handing them out to be tossed in the trash. Worse yet, they didn’t even discuss CO-OP advertising with any of the vendors that were going to reap the benefits of the expo! Why weren’t the vendors posting hugeass signs in THEIR store windows directing people to the “one day only sale” that was happening at the offsite location? Brides-to-be obviously won’t be aware of the location of the new shop that they were opening, but the participating bridal salons that already exist, certainly have a known presence and a clientelle that could have been drawn upon. Why not get THEM to use THEIR mailing lists – you know they have them??!!
Trump et al were so hinting at firing the entire lot of them and I was so hoping that that’s what they were going to do. Now that would have been an exciting, never-been-seen-before boardroom!
I forgot about this! Excellent point. For the lovea pete, at LEAST tuck in your shirt!
Well, I’ve thought from the very beginning that Kelly is gay. I have no concrete evidence except that A) he is 37 and has no wife or girlfriend; B) his gaydar reading is way into the Pink Zone; and C) he’s so hot that I really, really, want him to be.
When the doors opened to both shops, they were actually even - Even George admits this. Apex had actually pulled it all together. The only problem was that they neglected to adequately inform the public that they were open for business. In actual fact Mosaic screwed up, not having the phone number handy. Lucky for them this new crop of young brides are internet savvy. Getting an email form KNOT.COM, a reputable business was to them like a call to arms. 17 out of about a hundred customers compared to 2 out of two customers. O well.
According to the website, he’s “in a relationship.”
Hmmmmm…
Just about any woman who has gotten married, or is close to someone who has gotten married, in the last five years has heard of these sites. If not theknot, then UW or Wedding Channel. Brides set up web pages devoted to their wedding plans and invite family and friends to check in. Good lord, even I knew about theknot.com four years ago, and I’m so clueless about the wedding industry I’m practically a guy. And even if you didn’t know about it, a google search for wedding planning would pull them up. That’s how I found UltimateWedding.
There was no way they could have designed and implemented an ad in a newspaper with that kind of lead time - no newspaper would take an add from an unknown company with only 24 hours notice. Not to mention the slaughter they would take using open rates. I’m not even sure they could get classified in a major paper with that lead time. Posting the signs is a good idea, though - can’t throw those in the garbage!
Of course they could have designed an ad – the other team sure did. And the “unknown company” issue would be moot if they CO-OPed with the bridal salons whose merchandise was actually being sold, and simply used their accounts to sign up for the ads. Lead time is of course an issue, but they didn’t even try, so there’s no telling that they couldn’t have gotten something in there, even if it was just a classified ad.
24 hours is awfully tight for a newspaper ad. Not that it can’t be done, but we’ve never gotten space that quickly! It may have been worth trying. Newspapers frequently call us at the last minute looking to make deals on remnant space. They usually call us with much more than 24 hour notice, but you never know.
I was wondering why they didn’t have handouts for distribution at bridal registries, bakeries that sell wedding cakes (they could also get posters up there), and other places brides go. Plus, I wouldn’t have neccessarily thought of theknot.com, but I would have thought that someone had an email list of NYC brides. They have available email lists for everything else it seems. As others have shown, a quick google search could have produced something.
I do think they were at a disadvantage with the other team having someone in the business. However, there’s no excuse for just giving up. Other contestants have failed in their area of expertise. Plus, you never know. Mosaic could have made a huge mistake (say, Maria putting the wrong address in the email instead of just omitting the phone number). Why not give it your all? If nothing else, you demonstrate to Trump that even with a disadvantage you still gave it a good show.
Speaking of Maria, that phone number thing was enough to make me wish they could fire someone on the winning team for inexcusable gross incompetence. Isn’t she supposedly in marketing? If so, she’d surely know to proof a final copy before it’s sent out. I can imagine a vendor ommitting something from your original submission. It happens all the time. I’ve had entire pages disappear from brochures and emails always seem to get messed up. That’s why they send you something to approve before it goes live. You proof it and sign off on the copy you think is ready to go. Heck, I usually have someone else proof it as well before approving anything. If she had signed off on something with the phone number still included, it was a vendor mistake. But I didn’t see her produce anything like that.
I didn’t interpret Trump’s questions about why Chris didn’t bring JennM back as meaning he would have fired her. I think he wanted a damn good reason why, when a team lost as horribly as they did, Chris didn’t bring everyone back to the boardroom. “She was the best of our crappy team” wasn’t a good reason. But I think Chris would have been fired regardless of what he said. He messed up big time last week–and giving up was just ridiculous.
Kelly can’t be gay!
- He’s been in the military!
- We’ve seen him shirtless, and he’s not ‘ripped and cut’ enough to be gay.
- Besides, he has such a virile, masculine name.
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WRT Jenn as the unbeatable ace in the hole: Carolyn said it best… both teams had the same amount of merchandise, and both teams had an expert (the losers eventually found a bridal salon worker to advise them); but only one team had a sufficient amount of customers. It was marketing, a business strategy, which determined who won. Not insider knowledge of a industry.
As soon as the task started, I was yelling at Chris (through the magic of interactive TV? <shrug>), find your own damned expert!
Peace.