Celebrity Apprentice - Kodak
It's not very often I write about my employer. I have a little rule I follow which precludes this most of the time. Tonight is an exception though.
Earlier this week I received an email from Antonio Perez, the CEO of Kodak. I should say I wasn't alone as all employees received it I believe. Attached was a voicemail message that Donald Trump had left encouraging us to watch tonight's episode of Celebrity Apprentice.
I was greatly interested by this for a number of reasons. I remember watching the Apprentice back in the UK when Sir Alan Sugar was Donald Trump and really enjoyed the show. In the past I did watch one of Donald Trump series mainly I might add, so I could actually see something of who this Mr. Trump was. Again I enjoyed the show. However, I'm probably done with this now and the idea of a celebrity version did not really jump at me. I was a fan of the very first Celebrity Fame Academy back in 2003 - mainly driven by the participation of Ulrika Johnson at that time, but to use a phrase I've heard a lot recently, this idea has probably jumped the shark.
Add to this the fact that fellow Vancouver blogger Alan Yu has been doing a write up of the show this time, as he's done before and also read one of Mr. Trump's books which he reviewed chapter by chapter. Throw in the Kodak connection and you have a reasonable case for me to watch. Luckily the Canucks game was on the East coast so there was no clash!
The concept of the show followed the traditional approach. The products came from Kodak's Consumer Products division, which is making some excellent products. Case in point is this review of Kodak cameras from the recent CES in Las Vegas.
Back to the show ... for $150 bucks the printer featured is a really competitive deal, especially when you combine this with cost of the Ink which works out 50% less than it's competitors.
I'll leave Alan to let you know what happened at the end but for me I enjoyed the Kodak connection. Good job guys!
As for the programme itself, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Donald Trump seemed to be enjoying himself. Maybe it's the nature of this show - i.e. celebrity/charity etc but he did, if I can say this out loud, come across a lot more human than I've seen him previously. So the show was good, my problem was with the ad breaks. These make it really hard to watch anything - just when you think you are getting into something you suddenly realise that what you are getting into is women's sanitary products and/or a 20 secs snippet of a completely different show - very frustrating!
I can't say I will watch the Apprentice again, but I will re-aquaint myself with the Consumer Products division. I understand over at Kodak HQ in Rochester the employees were organising Apprentice watching parties for tonight - I hope they had as much fun as I did watching the show ....
