Look in the box

I've been catching up on the latest series of The Apprentice USA (god bless TV Drive). It's a great series, defying all the traditional perceptions you could have of reality tv and their usefulness to the viewing public other than as an arena of mawkish ridicule. What's interesting for me about this show is that many of the tasks involve some kind of marketing project, under much stricter timings than even we usually work under.

The task this week was to create a DIY clinic for Home Depot, the largest home improvement chain in the USA. If you havent seen them before, its where somebody demos a product and tries to engage customers to spend more money on something they didn't know they needed until they tipped up at the store. One team (Net Worth) decided to have a show and tell on how easy it was to construct a mobile kitchen island (i never knew what they were until I saw it, but they're a bit like this). It looked kind of ok (if you like that sort of thing), but despite the fact that the team weren't really into the task, the concept itself was complicated to understand, took forever to demonstrate, and didn't invite or allow for any kind of audience participation. Whatever, the team went along with it and eventually lost the task.

The other team (Magna Corp), was led by Craig, a quiet guy and very different to the rest of the candidates in that his day job was as a part time fireman, as opposed to a corporate lawyer or real estate developer. His suggestion was that they show people how to build a box that could be used to store toys. The team were very unimpressed, saying the idea lacked creativity and saw no opportunity to deliver something that would have the punters in awe at their marketing acumen. Whatever, the team went along with and eventually won the task. Here's why...

• Building a box is something we can all do with a bit of guidance. The demonstration was actually more of a workshop, and people readily joined in once they got over their initial fear of constructing something from a few slabs of wood and some screws and hinges.

• The box is just a box until you get it back to your house and personalise it. Then it becomes a piece of furniture and part of your home. Much of the audience had children with them and they were shown that with some paint and a bit of imagination the boxes could be customised until their hearts content. The kids duly joined in and much painting, hand printing and stencilling commenced, to the delight of the parents who started thinking really hard about how much they could do with something like this in their home.

• Finally, they called the boring old "box" and much more fancy "trunk", giving an otherwise fairly utilitarian piece of wood some warmth and personality.

The team leader was duly recognised as a bit of a visionary, but the criticism of him was fair. He wasn't able to communicate to the rest of the team that a simple box can be a great way to get customers to engage with the team and in turn Home Depot's brand.