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The Apprentice: Donald Trump, Week 2: Lamborghini and the NY Islanders
Original Air Date: 9/29/05
By Heidi Putallaz
The task this week is simple: since Lamborghini is coming out with a new car model, the teams are to create both a TV commercial and print campaign to be presented to Ehren Bragg, head of U.S. operations for Lamborghini and Kaplan Thaler of Kaplan Thaler advertising agency. The most original campaign wins.
Chris Valletta, the former so-called NFL player who I’m told never even made it onto the field, forces himself on the rest of his teammates as Project Manager, completely convinced that he and his other beer-swilling, skirt-chasing guys on this one have it in the bag…and they get off to a good start by deciding to meet with the Lamborghini execs. Someone has been watching past seasons of this show.
Before the meeting, Chris shoots down the ex-Beatlemania star (I swear he is!) Markus Garrison’s grand idea for a slogan to beat all slogans and warns him not to open his trap in the meeting. Markus refuses to be pushed around though and asks an exec what he thinks about “Smooth as Silk.” Did I miss something here? Were we advertising a sports car or some newfangled shaving gel? Nope, it’s not just me. The Lamborghini exec is like, well, stunned. “No,” is only polite thing he can muster while doing everything he can to keep from laughing.
Marshawn Evans, meanwhile, takes charge of the women on the Capital Edge team and puts Alla Wartenberg in charge of the TV ad while assigning Jennifer Murphy (and you thought you had seen the last of Jenn M.) the print campaign. Sounds good, right? Oh, wait…just one little problem. She has nothing to do herself except take all the credit and dodge all the blame.
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Alla though couldn’t be happier as she dives right in, making a great big show of herself as a film director to be reckoned with, telling the cameraman to “turn it this way and go that way.” You mean pan right and up? Well, at the least he has the decency to hold his laughter until Ms. Spielberg walks away.
The Excel team’s idea for their TV ad is to have a vintage Lamborghini throttle down the street and morph into the brand new model. Wait—did I say, Excel’s idea? What I meant was it was Chris’s idea and no one dared find fault in it for fear of ending up like Markus, whom Chris felt the urge to strip of his walkie talkie and bench on the sidelines, ostensibly because Markus couldn’t handle directing traffic.
Now, I’m not taking sides here, because truthfully I don’t care for either of them, but I must say that Chris is a couple of cylinders short under his hood. What does nostalgia have to do with selling a new car? If they were selling pocket watches that would be one thing, but a sports car? C’mon, where are all the hot models? Women everywhere may hate me for saying so, but I’m a realist, and if I were selling a car like a Lamborghini, I would put a schlump of a guy, undergoing a midlife crisis, in the driver’s seat with a beer in one hand and a cute blonde thing in his lap. I mean, God, even if you didn’t win the task, you’d at least have some fun seeing her play with the stick shift.
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Women everywhere may hate me for saying so, but I’m a realist, and if I were selling a car like a Lamborghini, I would put a schlump of a guy, undergoing a midlife crisis, in the driver’s seat with a beer in one hand and a cute blonde thing in his lap.
