Last night’s Celebrity Apprentice was a little marketing-thin for my liking, but hopefully I can pull out a few things that may help your small business. There were two back-to-back episodes again, with two different “marketing” challenges.
A 10-Day Fitness Article for Cosmopolitan Magazine
The first challenge was to create a 4-page editorial for Cosmopolitan magazine on a 10-day fitness challenge. The goal of the piece was to get people to download Cosmo’s fitness app, but none of the teams seem to mention it in their article.
What I Would Have Done: If the goal was to get readers to download the app, I would have started the article that way i.e. Day 1: Before you begin, download our fitness app. For each of the 10 day segments, I would have also given one tip that the fitness app would provide.
The men’s team had a pretty good idea to do a #selfie-type article encouraging readers to take a selfie of themselves doing the exercises as well as in provocative poses with their significant other as motivation to get in shape.
What I Would Have Done: I would have encouraged readers to take a selfie at the start of the 10-day workout, and then one at the end to show the results. I would have asked readers to tag all the photos with #cosmo10dayfitnesschallenge (it is so important to create your own hashtag). I would have also encouraged readers to get their friends and family to take the challenge, to circulate the article further.
The other team was all over the place just showing photos of the celebs doing exercises (boring). Both teams were too focused on making the article sexy because they felt that was Cosmo’s angle, but the truth is not everything Cosmo writes about is sexy.
What I Would Have Done: I would have focused on a workout for a different body part for each of the 10-days, with a matching diet tip, such as “Today, no sugar or white flour”. I would also have had each celeb contribute their best piece of dieting or fitness advice they ever received. There is value in that as many of these celebs are top athletes or likely have personal trainers.
A Pop-up Wedding Gown Boutique
This marketing task was part fund-raising challenge, part selling wedding dresses. For the fund-raising part it was simply the celebs calling up their rich friends, trying to get donations.
What I Would Have Done: I don’t have rich friends, but one thing I would have done is contact all the top wedding magazines (who I believe are situated in NYC) and ask for them to make a donation in exchange for putting their signage throughout the boutique.
As for the selling of the dresses themselves, viewers weren’t given a lot of details on how the celebrities attempted to get people to buy dresses, other than some of them trying to convince non-engaged women to buy one for charity (good luck with that).
What I Would Have Done: Again, I would have contacted some of the top wedding blogs and asked them to tweet out the sale to their followers in exchange for being mentioned on the show.
The celebs simply opened up their wedding dress shop, used balloons outside the store to get noticed (a little old school) and just displayed racks and racks of dresses, all clumped together.
What I Would Have Done: If you are trying to sell a lot of dresses in one day, you have to display them in a way that makes it easy for the customer to find the dress they want. So I would have organized the dresses (with signage) based on top searches, such as, “Dresses Under $200”, Short Wedding Dresses”, “Lace Wedding Dresses”, “Plus Size Wedding Dresses”, you get the idea. I would have also created eye-catching window displays (maybe live models), sandwich board signs on the street, and an awning over the door with a red carpet leading customers in.
As for drawing passersby attention to the shop, one team used Chippendale models to hand out flyers to drivers (not bad) and two of the celebs stood outside dressed as a bride and groom, but did little to interact with people on the street.
What I Would Have Done: I would have done something similar such as putting a celeb in a wedding gown, but I would have positioned them at the corner of a busy intersection holding a sign shaped like an arrow that says, “Wedding Dress Sale” (the arrow pointing in the direction of the shop).
What did you think of last night’s episodes? ‘Til next time, Gail.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: Marketing Dos and Don’ts from Celebrity Apprentice Episodes 4 & 5
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