Brand of the Week: The Apprentice
by Fred Roed on 05/04/06 at 9:59 pm
No comments
Who saw The Apprentice last week? I’m a huge fan. It has all the ingredients a TV show needs to pass my internal ‘Fred-test’. This means that I don’t watch a heck of a lot of TV, and I’ve got this sub-conscious screening process that filters The Young and the Restless’s from The Apprentice’s of this world. The wheat from the chaff, so to speak.
So now what does The Apprentice have that, say, Crossing Over With John Edwards doesn’t have? Both shows have complete lunatics as their figureheads. Both shows populate their episodes with a bunch of clowns scratching their heads trying to figure stuff out. Both have famously bad dialogue: ‘You’re fired’ vs. ‘I’m sensing the letter J somewhere over there in the audience.’
My thinking is that The Apprentice gets it because of a healthy dose of irony underlying the whole show. There are things that this sbow understands. It knows human nature is greedy, selfish, and self serving. It knows that we are fascinated by power. It knows that The Donald’s hairstlye is hilarious. It understands all these things and it invites us to observe all of them under a microscope, week after week through its wonderfully slick system of gimicks, plot triggers and Big Brother-style intrusion.
And the guest-stars? Talk about bringing on the heavy artillery. Last week they had Rudy Guilliani talking about leadership. His advice: ‘Be absolutely sure of what you believe. That way you know what decisions to make in crisis.’ Brilliant.
The Apprentice gets my Brand of the Week for giving us lots of good stuff to talk about.
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. Fred is the CEO of web marketing company World Wide Creative and the co-founder of online learning portal Heavy Chef. Fred loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. Follow Fred on Twitter here. View more articles by Fred Roed.
