Week 2, and the teams have to develop an app that will be going live, globally, for 24 hours – the winning team will be the team with the most downloads after those 24 hours are up.
To assist them, Shugsy had set them up with the opportunity to show off their app at an app show in London, and to pitch to 3 respected tech websites, one of which has a real global reach.
And with this information, the boys decide to create… an app that produces amusing regional accents, in English. Don’t get me wrong, their execution, from the design, to the name, to the pitch at the app show was vastly, vastly, superior to the girls’ efforts. But with the brief to produce something global, they went for something that might offend English speaking customers, and have absolutely no appeal to the other 95% of the planet.
And it cost them dear – by 5pm, they had outsold the girls by 3 to 1, but after that, they sold almost nothing, while 90% of the girls’ downloads came overnight, from outside the UK.
So what did the girls do right? Almost nothing. Their name was appalling (Ampi App? Really? You feel the need to have the word ‘app’ in the name of your app?), the design and execution was terrible (“Why is there a picture of an elephant with a dog noise?” “It’s all part of the random element” “Do you have an elephant noise?” “Erm, no”) and the presentation to the app show was like some weird, low-key, cult indoctrination, with Edna prowling around the stage with elbow length leather gloves.
It should have failed, badly.
But it had one redeeming feature*, a dog barking is a dog barking wherever you go, and the sound of chalk on a blackboard irritates people from Cambridge to Kathmandu. In other words, it was global.
I’d like to give the girls the benefit of the doubt and say that this was the rationale behind their choice, but there was no evidence that that much thought went into it. The programme editors could have left that discussion on the cutting room floor of course, but this is an app that was going to appeal to people’s annoying little brothers and sisters, and they decided to call it Ampi App, instead of something like Annoize or Soundefex, so I’m sticking with ‘more by luck than judgement’ as my verdict here.
And the lesson to be learned?
Listen to the brief! Whether it’s coming from your boss, or your client, the information you need should be right there (assuming it’s a decent brief of course which is a kettle of fish of a different colour). If you need to clarify it, clarify it, but if you make sure you understand what you are supposed to be doing at the start of the process, it will save you a lot of time, money and screaming further down the line.
Predictions for future weeks: To use a bit of localvocal, Leon ‘pyah saw his arse’ when Jim raised his voice at him in that boardroom, so he’s gonna be out within the next few weeks unless he manages to pull something spectacular out of it.
*ok, 2 of them, it wasn’t potentially offensive either, but there are plenty of offensive apps out there that sell by the bucket load.
Lydia
Lydia Bates is a communications junky. She’s also the creative force behind Copperwire Communications, which launches soon – You can follow the development of Copperwire over at the blog, That’s What She Says.
You can follow Lydia on twitter @lydiajo
I was looking for this kind of review for about 1 hour.. i’m glad i found it. Great piece of work, continue it. Best Regards.
Helpful advice! I have already been hunting for something like this for some time now. Many thanks!
Perfect information and facts! I have been hunting for some thing like this for a while now. Excellent!
The Apprentice is gruesomely fascinating and sort of realistic. Towards the end of the 2010 series I wrote an article about the role of luck in the tasks (my speciality is how we deal with uncertainty at work) and this season I’ve written something more specific about how to cope with the purchasing task.
The 2010 article is here: http://www.workinginuncertainty.co.uk/apprentice.shtml but if you want to take a look at the purchasing article then you’ll have to email me. Either way, start with the first article and see what you think.
Just to follow up on my previous comment, if you want to test your own skills in Apprentice situations then try the new test I’ve created. It’s the first one on the list here: http://www.workinginuncertainty.co.uk/tests.shtml