Know Your Client

            Repeatedly, we saw teams from The Apprentice fail to know their clients and follow their client’s instructions.  One would think this would be the simplest of principles to follow, but time and again the candidates from the different series missed this point.  It is missed often in the business world, and if you want to succeed, you must realize that you need to know your client and follow directions.  Here are some of the worst examples from the show.  Learn from their mistakes.

            Jason was the project manager for the men’s team and Amy was the project manager for the women during the second episode of season one.  The task involved creating an ad campaign for Marquis Jets.  The first thing Amy did after being explained the task by Donny Deutsch was to visit the client with Ereka to get a sense of what they were looking for in the campaign.  Troy suggested to Jason that they go meet with the client, and Kwame agreed that they should know what the customer wanted.  However, Jason put his foot down and said they would not meet with the client because he thought it would be a waste of time.

            In interviews, Jason’s teammates disagreed.  Troy stated, “Jason said it would be a waste of time.  If you’re marketing for a client, how do you know what to market unless you talk to the client?”  After the team lost, Kwame said, “Jason made an executive decision.  We didn’t go talk to the president of NetJets and it cost us big time in the task.”  Bill finished by saying, “It was shameful for us not to tap into that resource.  Donald Trump is going to call him out on that.”

            Bill was correct.  Trump did call Jason out on the fact that he made the decision to not meet with the President of NetJets.  He stated that he thought it was a terrible decision not to meet with the President, and continued to Jason, “If you had met with the President, face to face, you would have known he wanted a flashier campaign.”

            Jason picked Sam and Nick to join him in the boardroom, where one of them was to be fired.  Trump was surprised that Jason brought Nick back in, and after some questioning told Nick that he was not going to be fired that night.  Even though Sam was hated by some of his team, and not respected by any of his teammates, the decision came back to not knowing the client.  Trump told Jason, “You made the mistake of not meeting with the President.  Jason, you’re fired.”  After the three exited, Trump said, “Jason is a spectacular young man who I think is going to be tremendously successful, who didn’t deal with the boss, and that’s why he was fired.”

During the first episode of season two we saw an example of not knowing the target market.  The teams were designing a toy for young boys.  While watching the focus group of kids from behind a two way mirror, Pam commented that one of the boys had a Dumb and Dumber haircut.  This prompted Carolyn to comment in the boardroom that she did not believe the team understood children and that she felt the comment was offensive.  Besides making this comment in front of Carolyn and the Matel executives, the team did not create a toy that was as interesting to the boys as did the other team.  Trump thought the men would do a better job at building toys for boys, but was proved wrong.  George commented that he could not believe that the team of men could not design a toy for young boys, and that they failed to design a toy with motion.  You must know your client, your buyer and your market!

Not only must you know your client, you must also follow your client’s instructions.  During episode eight of the second season, Apex violated this cardinal rule and their ad was a disaster.  The task consisted of working at Deutsch Advertising, where they were to create a recruitment campaign for the New York City Police Department.  Donny Deutsch specifically told them that he wanted the teams to focus on the emotional elements of serving New York as a police officer.

When it was time for the presentations, Apex went first.  Their print and television ads portrayed the police like the military and asked the viewers to join them on the front lines.  Mosaic went next and their ad was in sharp contrast to the previous one, asking questions like, “When was the last time you were fearless?” and “when was the last time you made your family proud?”  Mosaic’s campaign focused on the human side of service.  This became very apparent when Deutsch called Trump to report on the two campaigns.  He said that Apex turned New York into a police state and could freak out New Yorkers, but Mosaic followed directions about going for emotion and went for the heart.  Deutsch told Trump it was not even close and Mosaic won by a landslide.

In the boardroom, Trump watched the losing ad.  Afterwards, he told the team, “Wow, based on that, I feel I live in a police state.  Forget about shooting The Apprentice, I ought to go upstairs and lock my door.  I would think that most wives, looking at that ad, aren’t going to say to their husbands, ‘please join up’ as they see people with machine guns, unless they have a very bad relationship and they want to lose their husband.”

Apex missed the mark with their ad.  It did not highlight the message the New York City Police Department wished to convey, and they failed to follow Donny Deutsch’s specific instructions to focus on the emotional elements of serving New York as a police officer.  Failing to follow the client’s instructions cost Apex the task, and Project Manager Elizabeth was fired.

We saw this again during episode eleven of season two.  The teams were assigned to develop an in-store promotional catalog for Levi’s jeans.  Mosaic failed to include butt shots in their catalog.  Robert Hanson, President of Levi’s company, was quick to point out that all of the shots in Mosaic’s catalog were front shots except for one.  In addition, Hanson pointed out that Mosaic dressed casually for the presentation, but they did not all wear Levi’s jeans.  This did not impress the client, and their catalog did not contain the but shots that Levi’s wanted.  In the boardroom, Trump opened by asking Maria whey the team did not include more butt shots of the models wearing Levi’s jeans.  Maria could not answer, so Wes answered for her stating that Maria was not happy with the photographs   featuring the model’s butts in jeans.  Trump also mentioned the teams failure to wear Levi’s during their presentation.  These mistakes, combined with the fighting and lack of control Wes demonstrated as Project Manager, resulted in not only one candidate being fired, but two, with both Maria and Wes leaving the show.

            Tara ’s first opportunity as Project Manager came during episode six of season three.  The task was to create an ad for a new Sony Playstation 2 video game called Gran Turismo 4, a racing game.  This happened to be a very unique ad, the teams got a bare twenty-foot wall in Harlem and had to use graffiti art to convey their message.  Both teams worked with graffiti artists and created impressive works of art.  However, it was not an art contest.

            Tara, as Project Manager of Net Worth, was more concerned with her perceptions of Harlem and making a social statement with the design, rather than what Sony actually wanted.  Craig commented in an interview, “It just goes to show you, we have that selfish perspective, we’re not considering others, your client, your customer.  You’ll miss out on a lot.”  Tara did miss out a lot.  Her concerns over the social statement of the art piece over shadowed the message Sony wanted conveyed, and that was a message that would sell the game.

            On the other hand, Alex, Project Manager of Magna, sent Bren and Stephanie to meet with the Sony executives to find out what they wanted, and realized that Stephanie was absolutely correct when she stated they needed anyone who looked at the wall to want to buy the game.  Alex then went to people on the street, the target audience and asked their opinions and incorporated them into their design.  While Tara focused on the art piece, Magna focused more on why people should buy the game.

            The Sony executives met with Trump before the candidates were allowed to enter the room.  Trump then shared some of the focus group’s comments with the teams.  The worst comment of all was a person stating that Net Worth’s ad didn’t make him want to go out and get the game.  Trump told the teams that the executives felt strongly that Magna had the better ad and they were the winners.  The executives felt that Net Worth’s ad did not have the salesmanship and that is what they were looking for.

            In the boardroom, George criticized Tara for having a concept before meeting with Sony.  He also questioned the phrase “Tear It Up” that Net Worth used in their ad, saying it had nothing to do with Sony or the game.  It was a Sony ad, not a community ad, and Tara had chosen to project a community theme rather than a Sony theme.  In the end, Trump looked at Tara and told her that it was a marketing task and, “You didn’t get the marketing task right.  Tara , you’re fired.”  Tara was yet another candidate that was fired for not knowing the client and doing what the client wanted.

            While Alex did well with the Sony task, he did not fare as good during episode thirteen when he and Bren designed the organizational product for Staples.  They failed to form a focus group, and they did not meet with the Staples executives in person.  After losing the task, they had to answer to these two failures in the boardroom.  Regarding their idea without a focus group, George commented, “It seems to me you did it all backwards.  If you’re designing an automobile, are you telling me that you go design a car, and at that point you figure out what people want?”

Alex admitted that it was his decision not to meet with the executives in person because he felt they could accomplish the same thing by telephone.  Trump told him, “You know, a telephone never accomplishes the same as a face to face meeting, never.  Why didn’t you meet with them?  I don’t understand that.  If for no other reason, you get to like them, they get to like you.  They take this piece of crap and say, ‘we like it because we like these two guys.’”

All of these examples illustrate the importance of meeting with the client and following the client’s directions.  Know your client and know what your client wants.  If you fail this, you will not have many clients to know.

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