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The Apprentice: You’re Hired!

The Apprentice

We had one hell of a lot of traffic on Wednesday due to interest in our posts “Why Wireless Ronin Is Taking A Beating…” [1] and our stories about Samsung – “Samsung Select signagelive®” [2] for example but that traffic was nothing compared to Thursday when we told the world “VMG To Buy Avanti Screenmedia’s Mall Business” [3].

At least we figured that the traffic on Thursday was due to those stories 😉 BUT what with all the furore over The Apprentice this week in the UK maybe it was just people (and journalists) in search of something else?

Late Wednesday evening saw the broadcasting of the final of The Apprentice [4] on the UK’s BBC terrestrial television network.

Hosted by Sir Alan Sugar, who depending on your point of view is a ‘barrow-boy’ made good or in some peoples’ eyes the UK equivalent of Donald Trump, this programme mirrors the successful US original and is now in its 4th series.

No-nonsense, self-made millionaire, Sir Alan Sugar returns to challenge a new group of 16 aspiring tycoons, all poised to battle it out in the toughest challenge of their lives.

The candidates lined up for series four include a barrister, a bank manager, a risk manager, and an ex-Army engineer. There is also a single mother, an international car trader, an artist, a former championship show jumper and an applicant with royal connections.

This new series raises the business bar, with more twists and turns than ever before. The demanding weekly challenges will see the teams sweat it out on rival projects.

Anyway at the end of the final, Sir Alan threw in a couple of comments that many related back to digital signage and digital out of home. Indeed in the follow up programme broadcast straight after, we refuse to tell you that it is available on the BBC iPlayer service, Ed called “The Apprentice: You’re Hired!” Sir Alan again made mention of digital advertising – putting up screens in London and selling advertising on them.

Literally in the last 24 hours we have received a dozen emails from networks, media buyers and journalists alike – even including the News Editor at mad.co.uk and have fielded phone calls from many others including the media correspondent at the Daily Telegraph!

So what’s it all about? Stay tuned. With publicity like that one can’t go wrong can one?