Well once again The Apprentice has featured an episode centered around designing an ad campaign for a product, and the results were about the same as previous attempts.

Some good, but mostly bad.

The 2 teams had to shoot a 30-second TV ad, and an ad campaign to (supposedly) support it. The men had a terribly boring commercial, where an older Lamborghini (Countach?) was shown driving down the street, then it morphs into the new Lamborghini (Gallardo?). First, the ‘morph’ looked pretty weak, and if you are going to do a commercial for an extraordinary car like a Lamborghini, why have such an ordinary shot as a car driving down the street? Use a shot that shows action and power…..like have the camera start by focusing in on the rear bumper as the driver revs the engine…..exhaust pipe jumps, then the car takes off squealing tires, the smoke from the tires covers up the camera, you hear the car getting further away, then you hear tires squeal again, now you hear the car getting closer, then it flies back through the smoke screen it created when it took off.

The print ads from the guys weren’t much better, but at LEAST they had a pseudo-campaign at work. Granted the different colors theme was pretty boring (Loved how Chris, the project leader, said at the start that you never use clichés in advertising, then one of his print ads was a green Gallardo with the tagline ‘Green with envy.’), but at least the concept of a campaign was there. However I didn’t see the connection from the commercial to the print ads. What about using the above commercial, then for the print ads, have a guy standing there in a cloud of smoke with the tagline ‘We’d love to show you the new Lamborghini Gallardo, but you’re 0.43 seconds too late’, or what about a shot of a Gallardo with the tagline ‘Want to see the new Lamborghini Gallardo go from 0 to 60? You’ve got 4.1 seconds to decide’. Anything that gives a sense of power and motion.

‘Green with envy’. Snicker. The funniest part is, didn’t the Dodge Neon do almost that exact ad a few years ago? Or maybe it was the Beetle. I will say this for the guys, Chris, the Project Leader, did at least tell his team to go into the meeting with Lamborghini with no preconceived notions about what they should do, but just listen to what their clients want. Course they still lost.

The women did a bit better, but not by much. The commercial did at least inspire some emotion, although as Caroline pointed out it seemed to be a bit of a hodge-podge. They showed shots of the car, engine, mixed with ‘Are you worthy’, ‘Do you want permission?’, and a couple others that was all I remember. Not great, but a helluva lot better than showing an overhead shot of a Lambo driving down the street. The print ad campaign…..I have no idea, I don’t think they showed it.

If you missed tonight’s episode, it will be replayed tomorrow night on CNBC at 7pm CST.

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