However, that’s the amount of money Synergy Corporation made for Sam’s Club last night on the inaugural edition of The Apprentice: International Edition (as I’ve dubbed it).
Weak.
Both teams were tasked with using the Goodyear Blimp to drive new or upgraded memberships to Sam’s Club. This is a perfect case of “the media didn’t drive the business.”
Trump didn’t even grade them on the right scale. How many of the 83 total memberships even saw the blimp, let alone changed their Saturday plans to go to Sam’s to get a membership? I’d venture NONE.
Too often, companies spend large sums of money on radio, TV, print, direct mail, and internet advertising with NO WAY of knowing if the advertising really works. Yes, it’s true: if sales go up after advertising, the advertising worked. Let’s just hope net profits far exceed the ad expenses. There are times to do this type of advertising.
But this was not the task.
The teams should have used the blimp to fly over Little League baseball games, community soccer games, local parks, and other places where large numbers of people gather. A decorated truck should have been in the parks to gather the memberships. At the very least, how about a phone number? The Blimp message should have been able to be read in 7 seconds or less and have a call to action that the reader could take immediately.
An incentive should have been used. The free duffle bags were fine; so were the massages. Instead, how about a Sam’s product with high margin? Pizza? Flowers? Etc.
My pick for the season: Allie (she reminds me of Kristin Chenoweth)
Dark Horses: Sean, Dan, and Brent
Check out www.goodyearblimp.com
P.S. The Yahoo! Hot Jobs sign on the cab is still washed out. Haven’t they learned to make that show up on TV yet?
