A creative Apprentice?

Last night Kimberley Jones (the Marketing Consultant) was fired from the current series of The Apprentice for a poorly managed and conceived launch of a cereal brand.

The candidates had to create a cereal brand, a character, design packaging, put together a marketing campaign and film a TV advert.

While Kimberley had problems with Philip Taylor and Lorraine Tighe arguing all the way through, she has admitted that she let Philip bulldoze his character "Pantsman" through, despite Lorraine's protestations, as there were no other ideas on the table.

As a marketing consultant myself I find that very strange! Usually marketing people are known for their creative ideas.

If she (or the team) had come up with another concept there would at least have been an alternative form which to choose.

Obviously managing a brainstorming session that results in creative ideas is harder than it looks!

Still, not briefing the packaging designers fully seems very strange – for a marketing consultant – although she had clearly run out of time.

The lesson appears to be that there has to be a balance between creativity and structure.

It will be intereresting to see how Phillip and Lorraine fare in future weeks.

Twitter for executives

On Monday I had the pleasure of co-presenting a short seminar on using social media tools to a forum of high-powered executive job-seekers

While some of the audience wholeheartedly grasped the opportunities presented by blogging, Twitter and Facebook, it is fair to say that a number were less convinced.

When we explained that many major companies (and CEOs) were using Twitter – to break news that could be of interest to those looking for a new role – more understood the potential power of social media.

The news that Twitter has launched a new website aimed at business users called ExecTweets which pulls together posts from corporate executives adds credence to what we were saying on Monday.

The site was created in conjunction with ad agency Federated Media and has been sponsored by Microsoft – so it is likely to become well-used very quickly. We will watch with interest.

ExecTweets: http://www.exectweets.com