The Edge Marketing

Everything you need to know about launching a new product or service you can learn from ... TV? Well, maybe not everything, but the first episode of the 2005 fall season of The Apprentice with Martha Stewart illuminated plenty of marketing lessons that you can learn from.

Here's the skinny:

In case you've never watched the show, individuals compete against each other in self-made teams in hopes of becoming the apprentice of the mogul who's the star of the show. In the original Apprentice, this was Donald Trump. Now Martha Stewart is seeking her own protege to help her keep her multibillion-dollar media empire thriving.

On the season premiere, two teams (known as Matchstick and Primarius) were given the assignment to take an existing fairy tale and turn it into a book for a first-grade audience. Matchstick chose to rework Hansel and Gretel, while Primarius chose Jack and the Beanstalk.

After days of brainstorming, project management (and mismanagement), frantic writing and first-class illustrations to go with the stories, Team Primarius was the clear winner.

Why did they win? Good question!

1. Their target audience had a need for the book. Kids love a good story. And most parents like to buy their kids stories that inspire them, so there is a continuous need for good kids' books. From that standpoint, both teams' books were winners from the start.

Quite frankly, the biggest problem most small business owners have with their marketing is a lack of understanding of what their target audience truly needs to begin with.

On The Apprentice, it's a given that there is a need for the product being sold before the teams receive their assignments, so it's easy to overlook this step in the process. If there isn't a group of kids in need of a good story, there's no need for a new children's book. Likewise, if your clients don't need something you're selling, you won't be able to make any money off of it.

Does your target audience really need what you're selling? If you're not sure, outline what you think they need, then ask valued clients for feedback to see if you're on the right track.

2. Looks aren't everything.

The winning team's book had a charming design that wasn't terribly fancy, but got the job done. And the story itself was written by a group of self-described business people who weren't terribly creative, but it worked, plain and simple.

On the other hand, the losing team's book had perfectly darling illustrations that all the adults loved. And the whole book rhymed -- no small feat for admitted non-writers, who likely added extra work to an already strenuous process just to ensure a "quality" product.

However, the story itself was overly complex, didn't engage the children, had content that many parents would find morally objectionable(!) and elicited almost no smiles from the group of 7-year-olds who were the test audience.

When you worry about the external factors of your products and services to the detriment of the actual content, your ideal clients won't engage -- and in other words, they won't buy. Finding a balance is key.

3. You shouldn't create something new without knowing that your target audience likes it.

It's one thing to tack on a new service and test out its effectiveness on a handful of clients -- and another entirely to develop an entire book without knowing that there is demand for it!

The Apprentice's winning team read a draft of their story to a group of kids long before they finalized it just to see what worked and what didn't. That way, they were able to see what needed to be fixed before their story was illustrated and typeset.

Preventing this problem by asking some target clients in advance can save you huge amounts of time and money.

4. Learn to respect other people's concerns.

This is harder for some people than others. At some point in our self-employed lifetime, we become experts in our respective fields, and there's no way anyone else other than a small handful of others could come close to our level of understanding. After all, we eat, sleep and breathe what we do every day.

As a result, it can be easy to laugh off concerns raised by clients, peers and prospects about our products and services because "they just don't get it." But don't laugh too hard -- there is plenty to be learned when someone doesn't understand what your small business offers.

Don't get caught up solely in what you think to be true. The contestant who got booted off at the end of the episode headed up the losing team. During his "reign," he constantly rejected the input of his peers, brushed aside concerns raised by fellow team members and forged ahead with what ended up being his own "baby," which he was proud of, but didn't actually work in the real world.

When your clients, peers and prospects give you input about anything related to your business, listen closely. Only a very small percentage of people -- as in, under 10% -- will actually contact you about problems with your products or services, which means what you're hearing is just the tip of the iceberg. Most people just write you off without going to the trouble of telling you.

5. There's more than one definition of creativity.

A lot of people think that in order to be creative, you have to be artistic or completely original. Sometimes people even associate creativity with being flaky or otherwise unstructured. Each of these descriptors -- "artistic," "original," "flaky" and "unstructured" -- can be used to describe some creative people. But none of the terms give any one person or group a monopoly on creativity.

The project that each group was assigned was not terribly "original." After all, the basis for both stories was a fairy tale that has existed for many years. And modernizing fairy tales isn't terribly innovative either.

The winning team, which was "business-minded," took an old favorite fairy tale, made it new and exciting by changing the setting and created an engaging story to keep kids interested. Conversely, the self-described "creative group," Matchstick, lost their battle because they attempted to be so different from the original Hansel and Gretel story that they missed the mark entirely.

Surprising but true, in many, if not most cases, people don't require complete originality in order to feel a connection. They just need to see why your take on something is special. A Shakespeare buff, I have watched probably 10 different interpretations of Hamlet and Macbeth over the years, and all have been satisfying in one way or another for their creative slant on an old theme.

Likewise, having spent years marketing brand-new technologies for Sony's consumer electronics range, I can assure you that when you show prospects something entirely new, there is so much of a learning curve that you spend at least a good year teaching people what that thing is, much less why they need it.

Digital cameras come to mind. In the initial years after Sony launched their first range of digital cameras, in the copy I wrote, I was forced to tell people how the images were saved, how the camera worked and essentially spell out what on earth such a thing was if I wanted them to understand their need for such a product. Nowadays you can simplify the explanation and focus on key benefits without educating consumers quite so much because they've heard of a digital camera before. It's difficult to be the first in a particular market, although in the long run, it generally gives you a leg up on the competition.

So while you need to be creative in the sense of ensuring that what you offer is useful and different from your competition, you don't need to be unique solely for the sake of being creative if there is nothing to gain from it. Being overly creative didn't do much for the losing team on The Apprentice, and it might not do much for your business either.

Although I don't expect you to share my enthusiasm for The Apprentice if you're not into the reality TV scene, I think you can see how much you can learn about building your business from this show, which airs on Tuesdays and Thursdays on NBC here in the U.S. (Check local listings for your area.)

Tune in and learn how to flex your marketing muscles more effectively. And don't forget the popcorn!

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