Did the West Midlands consumers connect to the apprentice beauty products task?

Last night’s episode of BBC's 'The Apprentice' seen the candidates travel to the Merry Hill Center, West Midlands to undertake their latest task, in selling beauty products.

The candidates which by the way still has Black Country-based Melody Hossaini still in contention for the prize of a business partnership with Lord Sugar.

If you have been regularly watching the apprentice this season you will no doubt be stuck on how it’s not any different to any other year, other than the show is being built more and more on the individuals own hype, and that the start of each show seems to focus attention on this which helps connect the audience to the task.

It was amusing to see right at the start of last night’s show how one of the candidates who in real life specialises in the selling and provision of beauty products, fall into the trap set and was the focus of attention – although it was not they who was a project manager.

The way the show made it look, was that on the notification of it being announced the task was to involve beauty products, this particular individual made a connection immediately to how good they were because that was their line of business.....How wrong could they be?

The retail locations they had to chose from within the West Midlands was ‘The Bullring’ which is smack bang in the middle of Birmingham City Centre, and the ‘Merry Hill Shopping Centre’ over in the Black Country.

If what was viewed was true to how it happened what was seen, was how no checking or in-depth investigations were made by this individual as to the suitability, the volume of footfall, the consumer mix, in regard to maximising the benefit of retail sales via beauty products selected to promote......it was almost the fact that the words ‘beauty products’ means that it’s my bag and a done deal.

The project manager of the team who the beauty specialist was on, to be honest, did not get carried away with their enthusiasm and supposed ability – they recognised by connecting to the task in hand so that enthusiasm of the beauty specialise was exactly that ....enthusiasm...!

Although they did come to a compromise in the volume of products to buy, the decision still really was enforced by the beauty specialise.

The team who the beauty specialist was in made the decision to operate from an out of town location, so they chose the ‘Merry Hill Shopping Centre’.

As the day progressed for both teams it had its good points and bad points, with the good points and teamwork more or less starting to kick in when it was too late towards the end of the day.

On one occasion the beauty specialist operating from Merry Hill was heard to say “people around here have no money”.....like that’s an excuse, perhaps the product mix was wrong - looking to charge exclusive prices in an out of town location.

On this occasion although this particular team won the task, it wasn’t really down to the team being great or even because of the knowledge and experience of the beauty specialist – they won because the other team were bad, so (excuse the pun) ‘The skin’ of the beauty specialist was saved.

As we always say the boardroom discussions and the lead-up chit chat cause great amusement, although not knowing they’d won at the time, the project manager expressed how she felt in being let down by the beauty specialist and her enthusiasm.

Scared of the pending result the beauty specialist came out with the immortal line, “look I only gave you my advice, it’s down to you if you chose to accept it or not”......obviously forgetting the chat she had with the team at the start of the task in stressing the point that she was wanting to buy double the products the team eventually ended up buying.

Last night the apprentice again showed that business people get carried away with their thoughts.....running before they can walk.

Connect to what you can actually do, and not to what you think you can do.