McCann’s Zaid Al-Zaidy Reflects on The Apprentice

McCann London's CEO Zaid Al-Zaidy took the latest Apprentice loser to task last night as part of the panel on BBC2's You're Fired. Appearing alongside host Jack Dee as well as comedian Romesh Ranganathan and journalist Grace Dent, the agency executive gave a grilling to this week's teams and their attempt to create an ad campaign for a new brand of shampoo.

Al-Zaidy was chosen to appear on the show to lend his business expertise to the review process, pointing out what the unlucky candidate did well and where they went wrong, how the teams worked together as a whole and how their approach to creating a brand campaign led to the end results presented to Lord Sugar, keeping in with the good humour of the show.

Following last night's entertaining broadcast, below, Al-Zaidy reflects on taking part by comparing his temporary TV role on the panel to his professional agency job in the advertising in an interview with shots.

How did the experience of critiquing work for TV compare to your professional role in the industry?

I think it’s not too dissimilar in that you basically look to constructively criticise and help people build towards a better outcome. It’s about learning and coaching on a job and I think when I was talking about how the teams performed in their exercises, it was about giving the view in a sense of what process we normally go through, what process they went through, how it matches and what they could have done differently, which is kind of what we do as a leader of an agency or a pitch team.

You’re constantly asking the questions of what are we doing to strive for the best outcome and optimising and recalibrating the team to energise it and point it in the right direction to help it succeed.

I feel like the spirit of the show, whilst it is about drama and entertainment, has got a really good purpose at the heart which is to help people get excited by and imagine what it’s like to live and work in the advertising industry.

Do you think it did give a good overview of the industry?

I think that’s what I love about The Apprentice, it gives people a snapshot of what it’s like to work in business and in different sectors and I think the audience love it because they get to learn about it, enjoy it and see it in a live environment that’s really entertaining.

And I think the TV production company, Boundless (Freemantle Media) in particular; their expertise is in fact-based entertainment, so entertainment hung on the power of truth, which I think is really interesting.

And is a shampoo a good choice of product for the task, in your opinion?

I think it is. FMCG is something we’ve all grown up with; I think the world around us has changed but the FMCG world has remained constant and the reason why companies like P&G and Unilever are such brilliant training grounds for business people is because in that classic FMCG world where you have saturated categories, copycat products and things becoming commoditised, innovation and modern ways to engage consumers becomes harder than ever because whether we like it or not they’re low interest categories.

So if you’re selling a car or something with high entertainment value like an Xbox game it’s easier in a way but if you have something that people take for granted, like shampoo, you have to work really hard on why people are going to care and how it’s going to perform in the marketplace.

I think it’s a really interesting exercise in marketing. If your product is absolutely amazing like a car or a luxury good you can kind of do less with greater impact. When the product is the promotion you don’t need to do much beyond just showing it.

Tell us about your thoughts on the role of an agency and the state of creative advertising in today's world?

We’re getting over the bumpy ride of technology and data throwing everyone into panic and realising that the classic rules of advertising and marketing are still strong. I think basing storytelling on truths is still hyper relevant but it’s tougher in that those ideas live in more complex ways and in varied places and the pressures on an agency to prove that the effectiveness of what they do is growing.

And what did you learn and take away from the experience on The Apprentice panel overall?

I think I learnt that actually when you watch a movie or a bit of content you receive it on such a human level but you never appreciate what goes behind it. And I now respect what we do as an industry way more because it just shows that to do good, quality work there’s so much science, love, passion, process and brilliance that goes behind it and often that’s missed and taken for granted. We should be really proud of what we do for a living.

If you missed the show and want to see Al-Zaidy's thoughts on the shampoo advertising task the episode is available to view on iPlayer for the next 30 days.