Last week, Paloma’s team – Synergy, at a guess – failed on a clothes-selling task up in The North, and she was finally ousted. At least, she was as soon as anyone else could get a word in edgeways.

Amusingly, Paloma’s website has a bunch of interviews that she’s taken from the web, printed out and then scanned as PDFs. We can’t think of a way it would be more convoluted.

Rather than a phone call, Lord Al wanders into the house to wake up the candidates a 7.30am. He fannies about with his phone as they slowly get ready. Stuart Baggs the Brand wanders down in a polo shirt and shorts, looking like a poor kid during PE.

The task is to create a complete marketing campaign for a household cleaning product. They’ve got two days to come up with a packaging design, radio and TV adverts, and pitch to the experts.

Stuart Baggs, the Brand puts himself forward as team leader for Syllo. Alex says “I’m always thinking outside of the box. If I was an apple pie, the apples inside would be orange.” This is obviously horseshit, but the team are happy for him to do it, just so he stops using stupid expressions like that. “Failure is not an option”, says Baggsy, as though he’s running a military operation or something.

Semi-anonymous Christopher, who was a sniper, and therefore immune from us taking the piss out of him, is team leader of Apollergy.

Chris, on Alex’s team, offers Germ-o-nate as a brand name. Terminate the germs. The Germ-o-nator. These are genuine ideas. Alex doesn’t like it, so they go for the infinitely better Helping Hand. By “infinitely better”, we mean “equally upsetting.”

The teams bother some nurseries. The mums hate Germ-o-nate as a name, but it’s been mentioned so many times that it’ll inevitably be used. They hate Helping Hand, too, so this is brilliant.

“We could go for something lighter… Blitz!” Nice one, Laura, you sensitive doofus. She mentions “Blitz Clean”, which sounds like Blitzkrieg, and is definitely the image they want.

Christopher loves the idea of an octopus, and won’t listen to Jamie and I’Anson’s ideas. Even though I’Anson owns a cleaning company. They settle on Octi-Kleen (“8 hands are better than 2″). Even though octopuses (and yes, we’re using that plural) have no hands.

Back in their meeting room, Alex’s team are still banging on about Germinator. Chris is living out his “writing an action film” fantasies. Stuart Baggs, The Brand offers “Hasta La Vista, Gravy!” as a strap line. Germ-o-nator is born. They go for red and black packaging, which is more like a Reservoir Dogs DVD case than a bottle of kitchen surface cleaner, and gives the impression that the contents actually kill your children.

Christopher auditions for a wife – to star alongside him in the advert. He’s worried that the actress would be a “minger”. The first one is. The second one is hot, and Christopher clearly likes her, but I’Anson says she looks more like his daughter. Gutted. He remembers that “sex sells”, which is especially true in the cleaning market: who can forget the Mr. Muscle and Toilet Duck sex tape?

Stuart Baggs, The Brand does the radio advert for the Germ-o-nator. He puts on a gruff voice that sounds more like he’s a 50-a-day smoker from Texas, and then goes on to do all the voices in a conversation between a Cockney and a little girl. It’s not scripted, and is exactly the result you’d get if you let an attention-seeking 16-year-old dick about in a recording studio.

Jamie and I’Anson do a quick, professional job in the studio, which is, er, a bit boring, so they don’t show much of it.

Christopher’s advert is awful: a woman tries to pack her daughter off to bed so she can fuck her husband. While dressed as an octopus. Hewer is massively unimpressed, and makes the word “grope” sound as horrendous as possible.

Alex’s advert is more of a mini-movie. “I can’t get rid of this gravy”, groans a fat man, as though he’s been shot and is trying to gasp out his insightful final words. There’s a smoke machine, and all sorts going on. Awful. A smoke machine. It’s not a Kajagoogoo video.

They have a kid playing the Germ-o-nator and using the product, despite Laura noticing that it has a “keep away from children” warning. Alex isn’t interested in what she has to say. It’ll probably be fine: what’s the worst that can happen when you mix children and bleach?

Laura and Stuart Baggs, the Brand finish their radio advert, but Alex tells them not to bother coming to help him out. Laura’s a marketing goddess or something, and isn’t doing any marketing. That’s the best thing for any marketeer to be doing.

“Eight hands are definitely better than two…” smirks Christopher, as though he’s being simultaneously wanked off by four women. His advert is clearly all about him getting to be Mr. Suave on the telly, rather than getting people to clean their worktops properly.

Alex’s slogan: “Coming soon, to a kitchen or bathroom near you” is the clunkiest tagline ever. Why not go the whole hog? “It can also be used on other wipe-clean surfaces, such as a table or a porch or maybe on your car or something.”

Their whole TV advert is fucking cringeworthy: unfunny, out-of-place and stupid. Stuart Baggs the Brand describes the bottle as being “like an ugly man”. The audience of experts isn’t impressed at all. Chris says he’s seen the advert 20 times, and laughed every time. He is the reason that BBC3 exists.

Jamie’s professional pitch is contrasted by the awfulness of Christopher’s advert. The actress playing his wife gets ready for a shag, then wears an octopus outfit, and finally settles down on the sofa with him. The whole things seems more like an advert for octopus sex than for a cleaning product. Christopher even finishes with a cheeky wink.

THE BOARDROOM

Did Alex clean up, or mess up? Silence from his team. Ouch. Alan really likes the Germ-o-nator name, but is unimpressed with the telly advert. Why does he like the name? IT’S AWFUL!

They show the octopus advert again. Oh God, why are they showing the octopus advert again? Stop showing the octopus advert. *wink* Alex and co. piss themselves laughing (they should get a stain remover in), and realise they’re onto a winner.

Oh, er… Christopher’s team win. But only because they were slightly less shit than Alex’s team. For a bunch of amateurs with two days’ notice, they didn’t do too badly. Their reward is a trip to Lucky Voice karaoke.

Alan boots Alex’s team out, and notes that “at least” one will be fired. Will it be Stuart Baggs, the Brand and Alex? We hope so.

Alex says that they took a risk. If that’s what they wanted to do, just take a risk, then they might as well have not bothered with a marketing campaign. Turn up with a blank bit of paper and say “this product is so good, that it doesn’t need advertising”, before breaking down in a corner and sobbing.

There’s a big bollocking from Alan for having a kid playing with the bottle, to which Laura points out that she told Alex not to do it. Laura’s protestations that Alex kept ignoring her just seem to annoy Alan. How dare she not be a belligerent nobhead like him, that can override a determined idiot?

Alex says that Sandeesh was reliable and did a very good job with the pitch, so he brings her and Chris back. Chris tries to argue him down over Sandeesh’s inclusion, but Alex has made his decision.

It’s not looking good for Alex. He thinks he ran the task well. He didn’t. Laura was in a “bad mood”, which is why she didn’t get on with him. Probably on her period, yeah? The message was apparently the worst thing. Not getting that across. Alex shows how effective he is at getting a message across by hollering over the top of Chris’ explanation.

Alex tells a mad story about them losing because of the colour of the packaging. Sandeesh interjects every time he stops to breathe, pointing out what crap he’s talking. He thinks that Sandeesh was the only person who heard the focus group say “yellow”, and should have told him. Because he’s have listened to her and ditched the Germ-o-nator gimmick immediately.

Chris makes a great point that if Alex thinks the colour of the bottle is the reason they lost, then he doesn’t understand marketing. He thinks Alex should go. Sandeesh agrees.

Al isn’t sure why Sandeesh is in there, and sends her back to the house. Alex should have realised that as soon as there was an outcry, she wouldn’t be fired.

Alex is, inevitably, fired. He thanks Alan, Karren and Nick, with the ingratiating, insincere manner of Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice. He’s been rubbish for weeks, and the others obviously thought he was a bit of a prat. He could never come back from that.

Next week: Someone WILL be fired.

Comments

1. Tim says:

   November 11, 2010 at 10:46 am

   Apollergy – love it! That would work as a team name in so many ways.

   I know this is a really tough task to do – in the real world you have more than five numpties at your disposal and it takes an awful lot more than two days and 64p to do properly – but this was a spectacular fail by both teams even by Apprentice standards. I was half expecting Christopher’s soft porn ad to come with the kind of laughter track you used to get on those nudge-nudge-wink-wink 70s sitcoms. And the less said about the efforts of Alex the Creative Guru, the better. Use a bloke and a kid to advertise a product aimed primarily at women which should be kept away from children. Really?!?

   Anyway, excellent summary as always. Here’s a link to my random observations:
   http://slouchingtowardsthatcham.com/2010/11/11/synergy-clean-up-in-apprentice-advertising-task-alex-is-scrubbed-out/

Leave a Reply

Your Name

E-mail address

We have absolutely no interest in e-mailing you,
selling your details or sharing your address.

Website

Comment

Captcha

Submit Comment