Last week I successfully predicted the winner of last night's season finale of The All Star Celebrity Apprentice. I predicted Trace Adkins, country music star over Penn Jillette, Las Vegas magician and comedian. Now I would like to confess that I cheated. I had inside information that led me to believe Trace Adkins would win. My son works part time while in college at Walgreens which featured heavily in the show's last challenge of designing a custom ice cream to be sold in the stores. He told me his store received a shipment of ice cream last week and that it was all Trace Adkin's team's flavor.
Personally, if not for that information I would have predicted Penn Jillette to win. For one thing, unlike Trace, Penn never "gave up" on a challenge. He may have expressed his misgivings to the team manager but then gave 100% on each assignment whereas Trace seemed to sit out two or three for which he couldn't get behind. This is a legitimate strategy to let your team lose in order to get rid of a weak member who is that week's project manager and thus the most vulnerable member of the team, but it doesn't make you look good to not support your team all you can, win or lose.
The main thing I liked about Penn was that he was the only one who seemed to understand marketing. Very often a product will have a marketing concept built around a particular theme and the contestants are suppose to incorporate this theme into their projects. Penn wisely knows that the main theme is ALWAYS the product itself, any marketing theme is secondary. So when the two teams were to have an event promoting South Africa tourism and the two themes for each team were Adventure and Romance, Penn knew that the real theme was South Africa. The opposing team pushed adventures such as shark cage diving and zip lines while Penn got South African musicians and dancers and South African cuisine. One event said Adventure and the other one said South Africa with Romance as a secondary theme. Naturally, the South African tourist board loved Penn's team.
He did it again the next week when a "Native American resort" (Indian casino) had five different themes to chose from based on playing cards; King, Queen, Jack, Ace and Joker. For this challenge Penn was the product manager and naturally picked Joker as he's a comedian and magician. The opposing team picked King and decorated their event with thrones and crowns and other objects that represented royalty while Penn got the entertainers from the casino, the chef from the casino and Native American music. His event was an actual representation of what the resort has to offer and not just a representation of a concept such as King or royalty. He won again and really should have taken the main title.
I think ultimately Donald Trump picked Trace Adkins over Penn Jillette because he felt Trace Adkins would take loosing harder than Penn who has a good sense of humor and seems easy going while Trace comes off as very serious and intense. It's not fair and it's not right but maybe Penn lost not because he didn't seem like the better winner but because he seemed like a better loser.
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