If they'd been better, they might have won.


The main show had a whole episode devoted to their CVs. That they ditched the episode relects your point. Lord Sugar's mentioning the CVs was a sort of minimal placeholder for it.


I'm sorry - are you saying that Kristina isn't a dominating female salesperson?

I think it's more than Lord Sugar isn't impressed by loud people. The Badger was louder than Michelle, and maybe better at sales, but not as strong across the board. Claire likewise: I was a fan, but even on sales she lost against Lee on the car task. Zoe was probably the weakest in the final and I'd have fired her instead of Emma the task before. The Apprentice is not about finding the best salesperson.

As you say the final task results seen arbitary. Declaring that one concept for bottled water can work and one can't without actually testing either, mirrors allowing someone to win for designing inedible chocolates because he declares from nowhere that that can be fixed wheras tasty chocolates can't be produced more cheaply .

I don't think its only the dominant sales people he's avoiding now. Since Michelle I think he's avoiding the really pretty (very often blonde) female high flyers too.He's also adverse to the really smart females and seems to also be avoiding anyone who the public (or the show editing) take against. He still seems vulnerable to the "I started from the bottom with no education" story but only from males now.

Yes, I take your point. Personally I don't buy bottled water except for sparkling 2litre so I can have fizzy lemon squash.

But what if you don't have easy access to a tap? Like when you're travelling about. Or don't trust the tap at work the way you do the one at home? Their marketing was targetted at people who are in those situations and when thirsty just want 'a bottle of water'. Price too plays a part. It sounds cheaper and will be too than say Perrier. The latter brand has been around a bit so feels old fashioned. It does say modern, green, no nonsense and also quirky in a play on Magritte's painting 'This is not a pipe', because this is the exact opposite of that.

Creating a brand name that uses the words to describe what everyone can see it is or does has the advantage of being easier to remember. It makes you think "well obviously. Why hasn't anyone done that before?" as opposed to "Evian, what's special about that?". That neither are just tap water, but from a named spring, are on the label and adverts.

Incidently Coca-Cola had Dasani which means what? Nothing it's a marketing made up name. It also turned out to be tap water, so got withdrawn in the UK although it is still sold in the rest of the world. Only Fools and Horses took the piss out of that. It's worth mentioning Dasani because that's an example of what not to do marketing wise and what the boys in particular were keen to distance themselves from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasani

http://www.stanford.edu/class/lingui...i/54dasani.jpg hehehehe

btw Dasani also appears to be part of a couple of porn star names. You have been warned. And no, I didn't know that until google showed me!

It wasn't a consumer taste testing task. Tap water often wins that one

As regards the chocolates, Kate's were straight Paul A Young chocs (his blog) and so would have retailed nearer £20 a box. The chocolatier with Yasmina was told to work to a mid price point, and did so. Although the 7p a choc was probably pulled out of thin air. But so was the £13 too. Btw they weren't inedible, Margaret was noticed scoffing them at the launch. The basil one was regarded as a failure though.
No idea why she highlighted it.
Yasmina is working well in that industry which involves a lot of selling, while Kate is working well with Ian Wright. Draw your own conclusions

I agree with all that, though Emma deserved to go before Zoe. Most of what failled in the final though was down to Zoe more than Kirsty it seemed to me. The Drip-Drop as a name was where it started to lose focus IMHO.

The cupcake task highlighted where sales alone are not enough, you must understand production and supply. Arjun did, earlier than most if not all. Camping task showed that even a good seller can't shift rubbish (unless you sell to Dixons ) The last three tasks all showed that you must understand your market and choose, sell/pitch and price at one that hit's as many customers that you can in that market. Oh and work hard all the time. Sorry Tim.

Sure, I'm aware of Just Water, and also This Water (and indeed Just Juice) - but they've still got a distinct branding element in the name so they're not just a generic name. As others have said, "a bottle of water" doesn't distinguish itself in any way.

Except that no one has yet had the sheer balls to say directly what it is as they did. But they cover any confusion with tap water by stating it's spring water from Derbyshire.

Two very successful brands that are named by what they first strike you as are the Mini, and the Beetle. The obvious gets the point to the consumer very directly. It's doesn't smell of marketing BS, but straightforward honesty with a bit of humour. That works well in the UK.

Hmm, somehow I just can't help thinking there's a reason people don't brand products like that. I find it hard to believe a couple of kids would suddenly come up with an epiphany like that that's eluded marketing professionals for decades... But what do I know?

Well as I mentioned earlier (having seen it on someone else's post) Waitrose do. And increasingly you are seeing it with first of all organic products, then larger companies trying to look organic. Just not been done with water, quite like that. The point I'm making is not that it's revolutionary, but that it is evolutionary.

And some of the daft concepts marketing professionals have come up with (and by extension advertisers) has paid the mortgage of Jimmy Carr for ages.

Oh (eau) "A Bottle of Water" should translate well.
Unlike these
http://www.theautochannel.com/news/d...news01368.html

Just cos they are marketing professionals only means they are paid for doing it. That there are so many suggests that some aren't very good.

Supermarket brands, yes. But aside from them, I can't think of any example in any market where the brand's just called "stuff" [insert name of generic commodity] without having the manufacturer's name in front of it (eg Heinz Baked Beans).

Well, no, I can think of just one in the last 20 years or so - "Teletext" (the teletext service that took over from Oracle), and you know what happened to them...

As I said earlier, only really supermarkets supply a broad spread of items. Maybe Unilever or Procter & Gamble have a wide spread. But they spend many millions promoting existing brands for years.

Yes, Teletext ceased after 16 years due to the internet and Ofcom. They still exist but in a different form, on the internet. Sorry, don't get your point.

And there's a reason why they're successful at doing so - because their brands have a significantly different image from their competitors...


Well it was just a light-hearted comment, really. But my "point" I suppose is that I still can't think of any example of a brand called anything along the lines of the stripped-down "a bottle of water", and being successful or memorable over a long period of time.

Well the soap powders are old brands mainly, so you already have a market.

Simple branding, or even no branding is becoming more common. It's anti-commercialism, or more accurately trading in on that. With recession it will become more popular. If money is tight, would you want to buy things you could see include the price of glossy adverts and ad men on expenses? That you've not see it isn't a reason to think it's been tried already and failed. It's more that it suits the times now, rather than the spend spend spend decades.

Ok it's a Boots logo, but this isn't Persil. Note it's pure flakes
http://www.boots.com/en/Boots-soap-flakes-425g_923904/

Or from fashion
http://www.psfk.com/2009/08/clothing...brandless.html
They are still going, and with plain tags. But isn't their market not so different from the one the boys were aiming for.

But it's still got a manufacturer's - or in this case a retailer's - name on it. To me that's just the same as a supermarket "own brand".

I still can't think of one example of a brand like "a bottle of water" that has nothing on it on the label but that, as a "brand name"... Why wouldn't you want to include your own company's name, to promote that in people's minds? If you don't, consumers aren't going to make the link if you launch a second product with a similarly stripped-down name.

I think the Yasmina vs Kate final was more a case of:

Kate winning on the quality of the chocolates, whereas Yasmina winning on the quality of the marketing and a much more sensible positioning within the confectionary market.

As Sugar was not looking for a chocolatier, the decision was an eminently sensible one in my eyes.

Yes, the Boots one is, but I was showing that simplicity and straight forwardness is used. The supermarket's own basic cheap brands have created public acceptance for this. No frills.

Arjun was wrong when he said the brand could be easily expanded to many areas. Apart from supermarkets or importers, few companies cover allthe areas he mentioned. Manafacturers are more specialised.

If it's just water then the brand works. Though you could flavour that water to increase the range later. The advert and I would hope the blurb on the back of the label stated it was from Rockwell, Derbyshire (a real mineral water spring)
To be a natural mineral water it has to be bottled at source from a specific underground spring. If they filter it, it is classified as spring water and can come from more than one source. If it's pure bottled water, it's from the tap.

http://www.food.gov.uk/enforcement/s.../mineralwaters

Nearly all of those have their origin as their brand name. Which limits them. Limited rainfall can cause production failings (this has happens in the UK to Malvern Water). Then it's a re-logo re-label job at great cost. 'A Bottle of Water' can come from any source and still keep the logo/brand. They aren't going for posey locations anyway.
So you can scale the types of water while still keeping the brand intact.

Quick bit of googling...
http://www.pmgeiser.ch/mineral/index.php?func=country
Check out some of the USA, NZ and Aussie ones
Climax KY from America? Kiwi water? Ah Water (Holland)

For really simple lettering http://www.1litre.com/home/product
Pricey designer chic

or just wrong, wrong, wrong
http://www.finewaters.com/Bottled_Wa.../Dog_Water.asp which may be now this
http://www.k9waterco.com/index.asp

And there used to be (?) one in the UK called Hydr8. Did the girl's team have to suddenly change their plans and come up with another one later on?

It is a trade mark in the UK, for a skincare product. Kirsty's Hidr8 may have been thought too close. If so any joined up ideas they had would have to be junked. That might explain why Drip-Drop had no relation to their earlier discussion or their pitch.

Hmmm

I agree Zoe sometimes failed to spot things eg charging more for customised cakes. She spotted the problem with making the camping product out of cardboard just as much as Kirsty did, though, as did Hibah - it's astonishing that Adam and Emma disregarded so many voices talking obvious sense! And on the Amsterdam task, it was more the negotiation after both teams picked the same product than the initial product selection where the task was won and lost.


He was pretty good on working out what was needed though. On the cupcake task his calculation was that 250 cakes would be enough, and if Zoe had followed that advice they'd have won more convincingly than they did.

While he was off-form in the Amsterdam task, I think he was in a difficult situation. He was trying to manage two particularly difficult individuals and was obviously doing so in the aftermath of a major falling-out in the team, hence I think some of his eagerness to try to please them and build bridges. His presentation certainly got worse feedback than Zoe's, but then that's just not one of his strengths (and is one of Zoe's)


Even with them on the same side, I think there's something to go on, even if not enough.

Zoe sold very well in week one; we saw little of Emma, who I assume sold, but didn't seem to do as well as Zoe.

In week two, Emma's sole contribution was the ghastly idea of making the product out of cardboard. Zoe may not have come up with an idea, but at any rate she saw that one for the turd that it was, and she did some excellent presentations.

Week three; well, Emma put in sterling work in the kitchen, and I can't fault her there; she did all that could have been expected of her, but she did have an extremely unrealistic idea of how many cupcakes they could make (she accused Zoe of expecting too much, but given her own initial lack of realism she was in no position to complain) and it's just as well Zoe didn't accept her figures. Indeed, Zoe, who is often accused of not paying attention to the views of others, made a compromise there, just when she shouldn't have! Zoe made errors in that task, but she did things right too; once again she sold well.

Week four; both Zoe and Emma sold well. Zoe did take on an extra responsibility, of going to see the artists, but then this was an obvious role for her, given her knowledge of the subject. She's been mocked for mentioning her parents, but they were relevant and might have played a strong part in getting Tom to choose her team to sell his work, had Kirsty not made such a poor impression on him as to render such strategies unnecessary. She did make a mistake in not pushing for the leeway to discount.

Week five; neither girl did well, really. Both were shockingly rude to the designers, especially Emma. However, Zoe did do one of the presentations and I think in the end contributed more in that task. I think Zoe deserved a place in the final more than Emma did.

Didn't win though, did she?

I don't think the name was the main issue. Lord Sugar felt that pitching water at teenagers was a bad idea, and the name (and Kirsty's advert) were only additional factors.

I can't remember which girl thought of aiming it at teenagers, but maybe others can.

Jesus, this thread reads like a GCSE marketing project.

.. and it's fascinating - for me, at least.

Kate's interviewing A listers, doing all the interesting things that the Blue Peter Girls get to do and mastering live TV presenting. Yasmina is selling Sugar products..........I know which job I would prefer .

I've always thought the actual job Lordalun gives out to be pretty underwhelming. Whilst many of those who got into or near to the final did well (The Badger, Saira, James Max, Katie Hopkins , Paul Tosari)
Overall The Apprentice is a show to "win" by not coming first

Sorry - I meant Yasmina, not Kristina. The point remains. She was a dominating female salesperson.