Targeting Customers

The previous episode of "The Apprentice" led to the departure of Kendra. No? Alright, Craig took the elevator of shame. No again? Umm... Tana? Okay, it was Alex. Jeez, make one wrong prediction....

The Arizona Republic's Suzanne Condie Lambert describes the task for this week - yes, the one that removed Alex from the game:

The job this week: Each team will get a Famous Pop Culture Artist We've Never Heard Of, who will design T-shirts celebrating "50 years of T-shirt culture." Teams will sell shirts; profits will be compared. Net Worth, er, losers will meet Trump in the boardroom.

But seriously, the lesson to be learned from this week's episode deals with marketing. Specifically if you're selling a product, (in this case, a T-shirt designed by a popular pop-culture artist) find out who the most motivated customers are for what you're selling, and make sure they know you're selling it, when you're selling it and where you're selling it!

In this episode, Magna team project manager Kendra demonstrated that she has some serious marketing chops by pinpointing the exact target demographic for her team's product, a Romero Britto designed Hanes T-shirt. Her target demographic: the artist's New York-based fans. As far as the scope of this week's task, this was a brilliant move. So good, in fact, it overcame her ongoing communication conflict with Magna teammate Craig to win the week. More from Suzanne Condie Lambert's episode wrapup:

But Kendra's best move of the challenge - aside from somehow avoiding manslaughter charges - is to send e-mails to the people who collect the works of their designer, Romero Britto.

Magna's novel use of marketing makes the difference, earning the team $2,705 to Net Worth's $1,147.95.

Who would have thought you could actually learn anything about business by watching "The Apprentice?"