Saturday, February 28, 2009

The Apprentice (continued)

After finishing watching the first season of "The Apprentice", I go on watching the other seasons. I love the show!

I think I can learn a lot from that.


As a student majoring Global Marketing Communication & Advertising (GMCA), the show is fantastic!


Except the benefits shared before, another important one is to learn about the companies. Most of the task-related companies in the show are world famous. Before coming to US and before majoring in marketing communications, I kind of knew some brands and companies, although not enough. But only knowing about them, sometimes only the brand or company name is far from enough. You should learn more about how it works. Watching the show and putting yourself into a context is a wonderful way. You can always gain some unexpected experience.


The night before last, I watched an episode in Season 3. It's about Nestle. I know the brand long ago, and my favorite coffee is Nescafe instant coffee. But in China the brand has it own Chinese name. For the English name, I took it for granted, as "nestle" is an English word. But after watching that episode I found myself wrong. The pronunciation of the brand is not the same as that of the English word! Also my pronunciation for "Nescafe" was wrong. I felt ashamed of myself! It also reminded me when my classmates asked me about my life in China (many of them are interested in China as China is developing super fast) and about coffee, I mentioned Nestle and Nescafe, but they were confused. I was wondering then "they didn't know the famous brand?" Now I know where the problem is. So I will go on watch "The Apprentice" and squeeze some time to watch other related programs to benefit more.


Another point is that one communications planning text book mentioned "The Apprentice", praising its success in product placement. Actually what "The Apprentice" did is more advanced than only product placement. It set the episodes in the background of the companies. Therefore, some companies negotiate with Donald Trump to become a background/context company of the show, mainly to further publicize the company and build the brand. So, the show is not only the show. It includes many other things implicitly. It's much more broad than we normally think.


Also I want to say about Carolyn. She was the eye and ear of Donald, responsible for monitoring and reporting how the teams did the projects. She was tough. But she is really a business professional. I admire her. In one episode, a candidate wanted to quit as she was too tired and could not stand the fast-pace and pressure. Then Carolyn came and consoled the candidate. For Carolyn, she really knew well what she should do for the best of the Trump Corporation, and she responded fast, and she was good at communication and consoling. Then she was not tough. She was not the monitor and watcher but a friend. We can also tell from other episodes that she can sense whether the direction was correct (for example, for an 30-second ad) from the beginning. The ads are designed for customers. I am a customer. But I cannot tell whether it's good or not, whether it's impressive or not, whether it's effective or not. So I still have a long way to go. But for Carolyn, she possesses many aspects required for a business-woman. I should say, she's successful.

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