Thursday, April 24, 2008

Marketing lessons from the Apprentice

I saw an episode of Donald Trumps 'The Apprentice' a while back that had an interesting task for the teams: Market a lotion that contains yogurt.

What happened next was pretty interetesting.

Both Group A and Group B went about identifying their target market (read: market segmentation) and came up with the following sweet spots:

Group A: Women between 28 and 45 years of age.
Group B: Women between 20 and 30 years of age.

Group A then tried to create an advertisement around the entire lifestyle starting with depicting a stay at home mom who used the cream on waking up in the morning, before heading out to shop/drop the kids and finally at night with a bit of a "sexual twist" added.

The interesting point was that their ads focused on answering the question " Why yogurt in the product is good for you". This theme was depicted across the ad all through.

Group B took a rather interesting approach where their ad showcased bare chested male guitarist (Trace Adkins) in the middle of the desert. They tried to add tons of "Oomph" factor to their ads as well as have the audience make a natural connection between the heat of the desert and the coolness offered by the creme.

Short video of Group B : http://youtube.com/watch?v=gyDA3gznwUY

After seeing both the ad-creatives that were designed, it was clearly evident that Group A had done a fabulous job than Group B.

A question that lingers in my mind is what made Group B's ad bomb more? Was it an overdose of the usage of sexuality or just a bad case of market segmentation or was it really both?