It was a definite case of deja vu on the Apprentice this week. In a repeat from Adam last week, we had Ghazal, one of the boardroom survivors who had begged to be project manager in order to prove themselves getting her wish, and again the gamble not paying off. To be fair, this was the advertising task, which thanks to the very limited time-scales involved is always notoriously difficult and unrealistic.
Effectively you have a few hours from cold to come up with a product, and then in two days have to produce a billboard advert and a TV advertisement. The product this year was a trainer – for which the teams had to come up with a brand and associated campaign.
Neither team did overly well – unfortunately the team difficulties came into play and yet again, Stealth lost as they effectively divided into two, and in another deja vu moment the fired candidate, who this time around had been relying on Katie throughout the task, admitted that she saw her in a whole new light having seen all of the rest of the footage in the programmes.
The most entertaining part of the episode was probably the Tre/Simon double act. The team had come up with a ‘reclaim the street’ concept for their campaign, which aimed to tie in to street culture. Unfortunately the limited choice of actors for the advert couldn’t provide the requisite dance skills. Luckily Cambridge graduate Simon proved to be multi-talented – well maybe it would be fairer to say that he was willing to try his hand at anything. He wrote and recorded the rap for the advert, and then volunteered to do the dancing. However through all of it Tre, who had come up with the concept got increasingly frustrated at the quality of the rap, and the lack of good dancers, leading to a number of amusing Tre-isms to camera.
Katie continued to dominate the other team. As a Global Brand Consultant this seemed like an ideal task for Katie, but despite her presence, and also with Naomi having relevant experience, the team failed to come up with a decent concept. Kristina and Naomi got increasingly frustrated, making a pretty obvious split with Katie and Ghazal. Unfortunately that left Katie running the team by proxy, to the extent that Katie later persuaded Ghazal to change the concept mere minutes before the other two team members headed off to film the advert and take the pictures. Despite producing a good looking advert and poster shot, it couldn’t make up for the lack of concept, which was quickly spotted by both Alan Sugar and the advertising agency.
Katie again was called into the boardroom but largely sat back whilst the other two, Naomi and Ghazal argued. Sugar however picked her up on this, at which point amazingly she seemed to be trying to flirt her way out of trouble – not that it got her very far – Sugar pointed out that she’d been on the loosing side six times out of eight, and what a lousy record this was. Interestingly after protesting for a while, she then tried the ‘give me a chance, make me project leader’ gamble that has been tried by Adam and Ghazal in the previous two weeks. Will it be the same outcome? We’ll have to wait and see…
As to potential winners, I’m not sure. Katie certainly seems to have annoyed Sir Alan enough that she won’t make it. Tre is probably too much of a hot-head too, even if he does survive longer. Naomi and Kristina are possibilities, and Simon seems universally popular amongst his fellow candidates and able to turn his hand to almost anything along with it. I have to say that Lohit is probably still my favourite, not least because he just quietly gets on with things – you can read more about his time on the show on his website. But then what do I know – Sugar very much follows his own path with his choices, so it may well still be a total surprise who he picks in a few weeks time.