Smells like teen spirit

We admit that here at Taste Towers we haven’t, of late, blogged quite as often as we’d like to. But now our new website is up and running it’s time to get back to blogging. And where better to start than with an episode of our fave show? Especially when it’s an episode devoted to branding, packing and advertising. So, for one week only, the Taste Apprentice blog is back…

Challenged to brand, package and promote a deodorant, Zara and Blond Harry were appointed team leaders, and given their bossy approach to leadership, it didn’t take long for several contestants to kick up a stink.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Blond Harry took Team Leader to be mean “what I say goes”, and before you could take the lid off an aerosol he was ignoring sensible suggestions and pushing his team in the direction he felt was best. Unfortunately that direction wasn’t terribly clear, unless “zany clichés” is, in fact, a brand strategy. *

Not that Zara was much better, as soon as we saw her saying “I’m not going to pretend I’m a specialist” we knew that she was going to be impossible to reason with when it came to making the ad. Sure enough, she was later seen sulking outside the editing suite huffily saying “I would hope she (Hayley) appreciates that I’m the one who has more knowledge in this area”.

But what about the design and branding? As ever on The Apprentice it was a little less than impressive – we do sometimes wonder if the candidates have ever seen packaging before. Luckily, some of Blond Harry’s suggestions – I Love My Deodorant and Sweat Doctor – were rightly pooh-poohed by his team, leaving them with the slightly random name Vanity for their brand.

Mind you, even that was less peculiar than Zara’s team’s choice of Raw. A prime example of why when naming a product you should always, always think about all of the meaning of the words you opt for – and then double check them in a dictionary and thesaurus while thinking a bit more about it. As Lord Sugar pointed out, the name conjured up images of allergic reactions – but that’s what happens when you make rash decisions.**

As ever, there were some classic Apprentice lessons to be learnt:

1. When targeting teens it’s not in the least bit necessary to have a focus group made up of people whose teenage years are still in progress. We can’t be alone in not having seen such a mature looking bunch of teenagers since we re-watched Grease at the weekend.

2. If you wish to convey that a character is geeky, simply supply them with a pair of Harry Potter specs – were we the only waiting for them to complete the cliché and tell her to remove her glasses and shake her hair out once she’d used the product?

3. Anything in an orange and grey can will look like either fly spray or spray tan. Equally, dark grey cans with faux gothic mirrors on them make your product look like random pound shop brand hairspray.

4. The Harry that isn’t Blond Harry looks a bit like Russell Tovey.

5. Princess Anne is apparently a style icon among teenage girls, well one teenage girl at least.

*It isn’t.

** Sorry, we know it’s a stinker of a pun…