Luke Owen on last night’s episode of The Apprentice 2012…
The second week of The Apprentice is a lot like the second day in the office of your new job. Faces sort of look familiar but you can only remember a handful of names and on top of that, there are some faces that you are pretty sure weren’t there last time.
This week’s task saw our teams have to create new gadgets for around the home that they can pitch to major retailers. Just sit back and think about that, these two teams have an opportunity to create a brand new gadget that could improve lives or at least make them slightly easier. So what did our two teams bring to the table? A cylinder to put rubbish in (a bin), marigolds with scouring pads on them (sticking two existing products together with superglue), a bath tap tea cosy (a towel) and a screen to stop water from splashing out of the bath (a shower curtain). What has amazed me about these two teams thus far in the competition is the complete lack of creativity and imagination (‘This is a Bus’).
Now it’s fairly obvious that Lord Sugar has some power over these self-centred souls. As well he should, he is after all the bread winner at the end of the day and these candidates are a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic. If he was to say ‘jump’, they would shout over the top of each other, ‘how high’ and then put forward their cases of how they started jumping from nothing and they would be a better jumper next time if only he’d give them another chance. But in this task, Lord Sugar pretty much gave them their target markets. “It could be anything in the home, could be the kitchen, the bathroom, whatever I don’t care” he said as he laid out the task. So they boys took the kitchen and the girls took the bathroom as if those were the only two rooms in a household. Suppose we’re lucky he didn’t say “broom cupboard”.
The boys were lead by Azhar (the stern one with the stern face who thinks he’s a killer whale at Seaworld) and decided to go with the bio-degradable food compactor which was the brain child of Duane (with the facial hair) because he is too lazy to recycle. Their other choice of the marigold cleaners came from Adam (the one who looks boring) which did test well with the focus group. However it was shot down by Azhar when he told them they’d done some market research which they hadn’t really done – something that Ricky Martin (not that one) predicted before saying, “So we’ve essentially invented the bin”.
Over on the girls team, it was Jane (Irish Catherine Tate) who stepped up to the plate beating out Katie (the quiet one who should have been fired last week) for the project manager role. Their product was a plastic screen that would stop your little kiddies splashing water all over your nice clean bathroom floor (because heaven forbid that ever get wet). Their other idea was a tea cosy you could put over the taps on your bath. To be honest, I still don’t see the point of a tea cosy for taps but it seemed to be the only idea they had that tested well with the focus group. But like any great Project Manager from Apprentice Past, Jane just decided to ignore the focus groups because frankly they clearly don’t know anything and she knows best. The girls ideas were so good, they made Maria (horrid eye shadow) fall asleep while discussing them. I’m not even kidding.
Both ideas were pretty terrible in their own unique ways. While the boys invented something that already existed, the girls invented something utterly useless. While the ability to draw on it was a nice touch, the screen was about 2 foot wide which means only 2 foot of your bathroom floor would be protected from the dreaded water. Wasn’t so much ‘Splish Splash’ and more ‘Naff Tatt’.
Last week’s cringe worthy moment was brought to us by the girl’s team and their bully sales tactics and not to disappoint they came up with the goods for more cringe-worthy television this week. This time is was in the pitches themselves as Jane asked Amazon to buy ONE MILLION UNITS (I’m surprised she didn’t put her little finger to her lips) of their bathtime ‘multimedia centre’ (her words not mine) before the whole team put on a shambolic display of maths as they got all their numbers wrong and were made to look like complete buffoons. The boys on the other hand had much better sales pitch lead by Stephen (wide eyes, never blinks) and backed up by ‘Inventor of the Year’ Duane.
In the board room, it came as no surprise when the girls were deemed the losers managing to sell 7,500 units (not quite the million they’d wanted) against the boys 13, 000 – but not before the entire boy’s team lambasted Azhar as a bad project manager and threw him to the wolves (something they seemed to retract during their football-like celebrations and nice dinner out).
In the rubbish cafe where no one knows your name because you’re a loser, the finger of blame seemed to land on Katie because she didn’t believe in the product and was being difficult to work with. However when it came to bringing people back in, Jane smartly brought back Maria who did nothing and Jenna (mousy one with the annoying voice) who was in charge of the pricing. Had Jane brought back in Katie, I think she would have probably tried to avoid the door hitting her on the arse as she left for a taxi. But she chose well because Lord Sugar’s finger point of doom fired Maria and her horrendous dress sense. It looked like we were going to get a double firing with Jane’s face being the target but she was spared for reasons I’m not quite sure of. She’d made a complete balls up of the task and ignored the focus group that told her that the product was naff.
Was it the right move? I’d say so. Maria was only 20 and she had an attitude about her that only a 20 year old with a restaurant could carry. She contributed nothing to the task or the team and fell asleep during a meeting. Having said that I would have preferred Jenna to go because her voice is really annoying and she doesn’t seem to have a single bit of charisma about her. Despite the poor display on this task, I think Jane has a lot more to give to this competition and she’ll probably make it to the 2nd half of the process before getting fired for getting pricing wrong again.
As for the boys, Azhar needs to lighten up a bit and learn some people skills because his managerial style left a lot to be desired. Ricky Martin (no nickname needed) put in a good showing in the board room and Adam showed that he may have a creative flair about him despite looking rather dull.
Next week – The teams must make a new condiment.
Remember if you do watch the show live I tend to live-tweet throughout it. You can follow my thoughts on @CGLuke_O
Apprentice Advice: Don’t fall asleep during meetings as it could make you look bad.
Quote of the Week: “He’s got all the gear, but no idea” Ricky Martin on Azhar’s project management skills
Top Tweet of the Show: Shamu lives to spash another day #bbcapprentice – @theorigalchrz
Luke Owen is a freelance copywriter working for Europe’s biggest golf holiday provider as their web content executive.
