We are constantly being bombarded with ‘Made in Britain’ slogans and with this being the year of the Queens diamond Jubilee, the idea to re-launch a quintessentially English product is extremely well timed. The English wine industry expected the Apprentice candidates to devise a marketing campaign ensuring that English Sparkling Wine became a serious competitor in the Champagne market. British product, British backing, British support.
From certain viewpoints it would appear that the candidates were a little confused by this task and weren’t entirely sure what they should be doing but as time went little pieces of the puzzle began falling into place for most of them. Of course when I say all of the candidates I’m excluding Stephen.
When trying to come up with an English branding Stephen suggested calling their product Grandeur. A great name… if it were a French wine. Come on Stephen get a grip! With comments like these we may have found the UK’s next stand-up star, let’s face it, it’s not his first laughable suggestion.
Project manager Tom decide that he and Adam should head off to the wine tasting sessions, Toms reasoning being that even though he works within the wine industry, he mainly deals with imported products. Both men really got into the swing of the tasting sessions, so much so that they seem to have forgotten that the idea is to spit out the excess wine rather than drink it. Adam took a fit of the giggles and Tom struggled to put a sentence together, whilst it looked like great fun it’s hardly a great example to set for your team. At least this week Tom could use the excessive wine tasting as the excuse for his constantly sleepy appearance.
Ricky Martin, loathed as I am to say it, yet again provided us all with some excellent viewing. His pitching skills are seriously good and he appeared to have the panel eating out of his hand until he unveiled the video which had been put together by Jenna and Stephen. The brief for the video was ‘quality, quality, quality’ it would seem that Jenna and Stephen heard ‘tacky, cheesy, cringeworthy’. The video alone lost them the task and so Ricky returned to the boardroom with Jenna and Stephen.
Lord Sugar listened to each of them plead their case; unfortunately we also had to listen to each of them plead their case which in some cases was quite painful. Jenna accepted full responsibility for the video, this annoyed me greatly. I may not be her biggest fan but I believe there were two people in the room directing the advert. Stephen, being the gentleman that he is, sat back and allowed Jenna to take the entirety of the blame. Who said chivalry was dead?
Stephen appears to be able to talk a good game yet he never seems to deliver. His argument is that he has won the majority of the tasks he was involved, including the task he led, but I suspect that the praise should be directed towards each of his team mates on the previous tasks.
Jenna was shown the door after Lord Sugar made his decision to fire her. He struggled to choose between both Jenna and Stephen but I can’t help wishing he’d gone the whole hog and fired Stephen too.
