Thursday, 31 May 2012

The penultimate week (and last week sorry).


Hello folks,

I know, you are all devastated that I missed last week’s blog. Oh what was that nobody noticed? Oh well here is this weeks, and a little bit of last week to re-cap.


So last week saw the demise of Stephen. Of course it did, there is only so much an idiot can ride his luck before he is found out. What is disappointing is that Gabby went as well. The idea was to sell Groupon like deals to customers, offering deals on luxury items or evens via a mobile app and website. Both teams had varying degrees of success but Stephen’s obvious lack of any ability running a team resulted in his team’s failure. This highlighted Gabrielle as the least useful in the team so she got fired, alas there are no longer any attractive girls in this year’s apprentice (sorry Jade, was that too mean?). Stephen have “placed a bet” with Lord S got the boot as he had failed. Good finally some sense off you go you popeyed wally. The only sad thing about Stephen getting the boot is that Gabrielle only had half a ‘You’re Fired’ focussed on her having to share her time with that loser.

And so to this week.

The plan was to set up and market a new luxury product. Ricky, as he was by himself was teamed up with Tom and this pair of little girls focussed on male grooming products as their luxury item; not a bad idea for the lads as they clearly knew the market and were a pretty slick operation from word go.

Adam was put in charge of the other team with Jade and Nick as his team mates. They chose confectionary as their item and completely got the wrong end of the stick for the task. They chose too many different things to focus on. What had started as hot chocolate became hot chocolate, chocolates, marshmallows and jelly sweets. They then knackered their pricing with no clear direction in what to price the products at, one suggesting £2.99 one suggesting £4.99 and ignoring the idea that a luxury item shouldn’t be anything.99. they had some nice ideas for their retail environment, serving a mixture of cocktails that matched their sweets, with a focus on the drunken jellies (Jade’s idea, bless) and had a nice, Willy Wonka looking shop front.
The lads on the other hand went uber-minimal and stuck to bland, grey packaging that didn’t either catch the eye or inspire much thought for the product, their retail environment looked equally as empty, with a barber’s chair to try out some of the facial moisturiser and a couple of relatively bare looking shelves. What they did have, though, was a well rehearsed and detailed pitch that leant their product some credibility and made the pair look very professional. They used their pitch to second guess any difficult questions that they may be asked, regarding the packaging mostly, cementing their professional appearance.

This was what led Adam and the gang down. Despite their product looking ok and the good use of their retail space they really failed to deliver on the pitch. They stumbled over questions and looked caught out by a lot of things, even old Sugsy had a pop at them during their pitch.

When it came to the boardroom it was an easy win for Ricky and Tom, meaning that they were the first two through to the final. Adam, Jade and Nick headed off to the cafe to await their fate.

Back in the boardroom there was a degree of to-ing and fro-ing between Jade and Adam in particular as to whose fault the failure of the last was, but Nick didn’t swerve any of the attention from Lord Sugar as he has run a hot chocolate business before and should have known better, Sugar isn’t a big fan of people nit using their expertise. After all of the shouting the finger was pointed at Adam. To be fair to him he got a ‘with regret’ from Lord Sugar, which is always a decent sign and despite my original dislike of the pink faced worm he did a lot to ingratiate himself with me and I think many others in the end. He did throw himself into any role with fearless aplomb, even if these acts were drowned out by the shrill northern bleating of “I’m well out my comfort zone here” or distracted by his inability to grasp what a choreographer was. In the end he was a decent enough bloke, possibly a bit sexist (maybe a lot) but anyone who has read this blog from week one will see that it is possible that I am as well.

So fair play Jade, Nick, Ricky and Tom. I have to say my money is firmly on Ricky. He is assured and hard working and looks like an upright Joe Swanson from Family Guy, “Nice work Rookie”.

I would like to add an addendum to this week’s blog. Shame on the BBC for featuring lying, vile scum like Kelvin Mackenzie on a show watched by nice and intelligent people. He is quite literally the worst kind of human being. I hope he continues to get fat on his lies until he finally bursts the lie mongering hate filled bastard.

See you all next time.

Andrew D. Clark

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