For the first time, week 4 of this Apprentice series-Thursday, 10/13/05- I finally tuned in. There had been three eliminations by then although there were still plenty of contenders with hopes of hearing The Donald say "You're HIRED."
Just as soon as the show began there seemed to be an air of despair and disdain of one contestant, Toral. Since I hadn't seen the earlier shows I paid close attention to ascertain just what about this woman so offended her team mates so.
The teams were divided into males and females. The male team was named Excel, the female team-Capital Edge.
In the whispered asides of contestant-to-contestant there was much mention of this Toral woman. My sense was that Toral would figure prominently in this episode.
The challenge this past week was for each team to come up with a living character that would represent Dairy Queen's vaunted product, "The Blizzard". A "Ronald McDonald" if you will, for Dairy Queen.
The Excel team came up with a character they called the "Genie Blizzard". A very clever concept I thought. Especially that bit with the soft-serve ice cream hair. Add a handsome sparkling belt buckle with the letters "DQ' sequined upon and this character seemed happening, hip and representative of the famous ice cream chain's product and name.
One of the Excel team readily volunteered to don the outfit. Interesting more because the team was all men, thus the volunteer was a man. He had to wear fake boobs and all involved with transformation from male to female.
Meanwhile, the Toral-hating team came up with a Micky Mouse type of affair that they called "Zip". Duh. Nowhere on their character were either the words "Dairy Queen" or the letters "DQ" plainly evident. Also, the Dairy Queen execs lamented, upon this team's presentation, that their target consumers were mostly young males. This Micky Mouse rip-off hardly appealed to that demographic.
Couple of things. While it wasn't clear that the demographic was provided in advance, it would seem a happening and smart team of liberated females would have asked before beginning their design. Also, logos, logos, logos, name recognition. As The Donald explained later in the infamous Boardroom, companies spend millions for name recognition. To not have some representation of the character's company is a bit dumb.
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