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WEEK SIX


SWEEPSTAKES SMACKDOWN

 

Surya returned from last week's narrow boardroom escape angered by the lack of leadership on Arrow, but also by what he saw as deceit. "Don't lie, don't lie," he implored his teammates as he clamored to be the leader on the next task. "There is nothing I love more than being the underdog," he proclaimed, while assuring one and all, "We will win."

The next day Mr. Trump was ready for his own brand of getaway--a business trip--as he gathered the teams on the airport tarmac in the shadow of his massive Trump airliner. After the mogul put Arrow and Kinetic under the supervision of executives from Priceline.com, the teams were then assigned to set up shopping mall kiosks using Adspace promotional technology and compete to generate the most sweepstakes signups for the online travel powerhouse.

Kinetic's Aimee realized that despite their recent win, many on her team felt she'd faltered on the previous task. So she resolved to more clearly delegate responsibility and exert her authority. Kristine remained unimpressed: "Aimee was delegating tasks without thinking them through...Aimee's just not getting it."

Arrow had leadership issues of its own. During the brainstorming and organizational meeting, Frank and Tim mocked Surya's uber-serious style behind his back, passing notes about their PM. Despite the tomfoolery, Arrow settled on a savvy strategy of having an incremental sweepstakes winner every 20 minutes as a way to create excitement and draw a crowd, all the better to register mall patrons for the larger Priceline.com sweepstakes. And while Frank said he felt that Surya lacked the spark of leadership, that didn't prevent the brash Bronx guy from leafleting area shops and turning on the charm when it came to closing sales in the kiosk. "I'm just a selling machine," bragged Frank.

Kinetic created a strategy similar to Arrow's by raffling off a $1,000 travel gift certificate every half-hour to draw a crowd. They also created a tropical hut display and donned Hawaiian shirts to conjure a festive vacation spirit. But Kinetic hit a demographic snag when it turned out that about half of the shoppers in their mall were Latinos who could barely speak a word of English. Though some of the team had noticed the language barrier earlier early on, this linguistic 411 hadn't trickled up to PM Aimee. And with only Muna and Derek conversant in Spanish, the English instructions on the kiosk computers created a bottleneck that clearly cost Kinetic some signups.

When Don Trump Jr. joined his father and the assembled teams in the boardroom, it was bad news for Kinetic: Arrow clearly signed up more customers in the sweepstakes competition, 359 to 326. Trump Sr. told Aimee he was disappointed in her. "The sad news is you have to move back into the tents," said the mogul. "Life is a bitch."

For their reward Arrow won a mini beach vacation, including surfing lessons in Malibu from world champion boarders Pat O'Connell and Lisa Andersen, followed by a fine-dining getaway at Gladstone's. Surya and the rest of Arrow learned fast and were enjoying the robust and choppy surf until Nicole ate a wave and came up with an extremely sore ankle. Gallant Tim volunteered to skip the second part of the reward and accompany his crush to the doctor. Luckily, Nicole's ankle wasn't broken; the searing pain turned out to be just a jellyfish sting. Meanwhile, somebody on Kinetic was about to face the wrathful sting of Trump in the boardroom.


 

LESSONS LEARNED