The Apprentice: Los Angeles, Weekly Performance Review, Episode 5 – Marketing Buzz

This week-off break gave me the opportunity to catch up with a lot of the material on the Yahoo site. Besides the webisodes (under-ten-minute retellings of each episode, usually with plenty of new material) and extra scenes (called “deleted scenes”), even entire episodes are also posted there. I’ve come to the conclusion that this information is too valuable not to take into consideration in these articles. One might be surprised at the significant events the masses are not seeing. Had I taken this additional source of material under consideration in earlier weeks, I’d have changed some of my ratings.

So, a reversal of operations is indicated. Effective this week, material posted on Yahoo’s The Apprentice: Los Angeles pages will be considered in my evaluations. I will try and remember to identify the source is Yahoo when I use it.

So, what happens this week? No “deleted scenes” at all, and the webisode itself contains little new information. Figures. But, there are one or two wee nuggets…

For your bookmarking convenience, I highly recommend that you add this link to your “Favorites.” Of course, RealityNewsOnline recaps all the Yahoo Extras, but scheduling issues will sometimes mean this column appears before that recap.

The Task:

Much like the last task, this week the teams were involved with the creation, promotion, and selling of a new food item. This time, it was honey, and this time they had to make an effort to attract customers as they were situated in areas of low foot traffic. However, judging was still based on gross sales, so it was all about attracting business and closing the sale once again.

Both teams seemed to make plenty of honey to sell without fatal problems, but neither side managed the project with any discernable skill whatsoever.

Team Kinetic:

Kinetic keeps on winning. I’m not sure how, but I suspect Arrow is primarily responsible.

I note Kinetic’s signage was of car-wash quality and there were many, many shots of team members standing about, unsure what they ought to be doing. But for now they are back in the mansion, harmony abounds (outwardly, at least), and they just won a fun reward that reinforced the importance of teamwork.

Aimee: I liked it that Aimee volunteered to be the Project Manager (PM). That took guts, because it’s the hardest job and week after week, the pressure never goes away. Regrettably, that’s about the end of her shining moments until the Boardroom.

I do feel Aimee did a horrible job as PM – as bad as, or worse than, Aaron. Except for some unplanned sales initiatives, it’s almost impossible to name an aspect of this project worth emulating. Positive PM activity from Aimee is just as hard to identify. The team was disorganized at almost every stage, including four wasted hours of her own disguised as an initial marketing effort.

More importantly, everyone showed up at the retail outlet without assigned tasks. That is really ugly resource management. The result was that they were not ready to start selling when the store opened. Inexcusable!

Per the webisode, Aimee took on a time-consuming but relatively unimportant shopping task along with Jenn, instead of directing the others. At this point in time there was no signage and no pricing. A little later on, she decided it was more important she make coffee than stock or label the shelves.

In the Arrow Boardroom, Aimee was determined to protect Surya from bullying. That’s great planning and exactly what she should have done. Surya is now in her debt, plus, Surya is not a threat to win, so keeping him in the game at the expense of another is wise. However, Aimee’s execution was a little heavy-handed and unfortunately, Trump noticed. His comment, “Maybe she’s too tough,” is an indication that he sees something in her he doesn’t like. Me, I don’t think she was too tough at all and I applaud her direct, no-nonsense questions.

As a result of the strong Boardroom showing, I will upgrade Aimee’s rating to NEEDS IMPROVEMENT. The team won in spite of her leadership, not because of it. If she continues to lead the team exhibiting a similar skill set, no matter how poorly Team Arrow does, Kinetic cannot continue to win.

Angela: Finally, there is confirmation that the cast includes an Olympic athlete named Angela! For the first time, Kinetic decided to trade off on her notoriety. Though we cannot be positive of the source, I’m led to think it was Angela’s own idea. It actually seemed to be generating a fair number of sales.

In the webisode, we saw Angela help Muna out by describing Aimee as “directionless” to Sean. Sean privately told us he was unimpressed by the way both ladies handled themselves and he would have preferred seeing action instead of hearing complaints.

I’m just so happy to actually see a contribution from Angela that I will bestow a SATISFACTORY rating on her. There’s still TONS of room for growth here though, and preferably we’ll see it on real business activities and not just trading on her notoriety.

Derek: I applaud Derek for hanging in there with the angry bees; it showed perseverance. He also showed resolve when, using their own initiative, he and Muna took it upon themselves to perform an overlooked task and lug their product up to the sales floor. More on that below.

But Derek’s shining moment was to dress in a beekeeper’s outfit and generate a little buzz for their sale. Yes, that idea of Marisa’s of putting someone in a costume to get noticed by the passing public, that hoary idea that Derek and the others disliked so much last time out… that saved the day. I love irony.