You earned it.

So I've been watching Celebrity Apprentice this season, because there were a lot of cool people that were on it-- George Takei, Paul from American Chopper, Lisa Lampanelli, and, of course, Penn Jillette. It's been a really interesting show to watch. Mostly I've hated every person on the women's side except Lisa, and have been annoyed at their cattiness, and mostly I've loved the men, and been pleased at their professionalism. Of course, more of them men have real careers-- many of the women were singers I've never heard of or on TV shows like Real Housewives. I would expect the people who actually work for a living to be a bit more successful in a business-oriented show.

Anyway, last night, they fired Penn. I am annoyed by this, and not only becaue I like the guy and think he was one of the best (if not THE best) contestants.

The task was to create an in-store display for the Macy's flagship store to launch Mr. Trump's new cologne, Success. They had a certain amount of space to work with and about a day to do this, and one of the things they had to do was to come up with a slogan. Slogans are, of course, part of the alchemy that is successful marketing; it's hard to measure exactly what they do, but a good one will help sell more stuff. It should be short, simple, and memorable. And it should ideally both say something positive about the product and invoke positive feelings in the consumer. Marketing, like everything in the nebulous "science" of economics, is a sort of voodoo, and very hard to quantify. So the judging of which slogan (and which display in general) really depended on how the Macy's executives felt about it. However, I think that their feeling about this one was wrong; I think they made the wrong choice, and that if they make decisions like this all the time, it's no wonder they are not a store I prefer to shop at.

One team used a quote from Donald Trump, always a good call, sucking up to the boss-- except that he was not the one making the decision, but whatever. They went with "Always Trust Your Instincts." ... I don't see how that is a particularly good slogan. If I am out at Macy's around Christmas timee, looking for a gift for a man, and I see/remember a display that says "Always Trust Your Instincts", I am more likely to take that as advice, and go get the first thing I thought of, rather than the cologne in question. (I doubt that the majority of people who will be buying the cologne from Macy's are men; men who buy their own cologne shop in better stores.) Also, their display looked like a set piece from a school play-- obviously made by hand.

The team Penn was on put together a much better display, with a beautiful backlit photo and just a lot more professionalism all around. It was the kind of display that I would stop and look at, if I were shopping. And their slogan, I thought, was better: "You earned it." That says to me 'be proud of your success, treat yourself to something nice, buy this cologne.' And I think it is a much better slogan if you are buying a gift-- I got you this nice cologne, because hey, you earned it.

The Macy's executives hated it. They thought it was pompous, and not at all what their clients were looking for. And that tells me that Macy's will always be a low end department store, and will never attract the kind of clientele that spend more money.

Perhaps it is a little "pompous." But to succeed, you have to have a bit of an ego. If you are buying a cologne that has the Trump name on it and is called "Success," you're probably a little pompous yourself. You feel like you DO deserve it. Also? Huge cosmetics company L'Oreal uses the slogan "Because you're worth it." It's been pretty damned successful for them.

So Trump fired Penn, because he came up with the slogan the executives hated-- after admitting that he himself actually like it. And I get that decision, even if I don't like it. But the Macy's executives... all I have to say to them is "You're wrong, and you're stupid for thinking that."