The Apprentice 2011: Episode 5 by shoutingatco.ws

On last week’s Apprentice, the teams disappeared off to shopping centres to sell beauty tat. Project Manager Felicity managed to lose money and was swiftly despatched by taxi to the You’re Fired studio.

Tonight is the Branding Task. They’re going to make a new pet food, and pitch their ad campaigns at the professionals.

Logic’s PM Vincent Dinosaur suggests naming their dog food “Pals”, which is up there with naming a computer firm Microsofts, or a dildo shop called Piers Morgans. Eventually, they stumble upon “Every Dog”, before finding out that not every dog has the same diet. Tom makes a suggestion, and gets shot down for the 1,047th time. Still, Vincent likes the Every Dog concept, and has already imagined an “Every…” franchise in the same vein as the Well Known Airline, with Every Cat, Every Fish and Everybody Needs Somebody to Love.

Venture’s focus groups approve of “Lucky Fish”, a cat food designed to distract moggies from killing other pets. PM Glenn changes it to “CAT-SIZE”, a poor pun on the reflective motor safety device, and targeting a weird market: Fat Cats. Literally, a tub of slimming food for cats. Despite all protestations, Glenn’s foot is firmly down on the side of the task-destroying CAT-SIZE.

Melody decides that the Every Dog product is going to be perfect for the finely tuned dietary requirements of all dogs, because it looks colourful. There’s no way this can go wrong.

A pointless segment follows, in which Jim and Vincent take snaps of London’s finest mutts for their ad campaign. Meanwhile, Leon upsets the owner of a Sphinx cat, and laughs at Glenn’s terrible “see their light” slogan. Glenn gets angry at their piss-taking, before Zoe shoots him down in flames over her wasted morning figuring out a half-decent brand. CAT-SIZE. CAT. SIZE.

Vincent and Tom go off to record an advertising voiceover, complete with a Dinosaur bark. Tom does press-ups to increase his heart-rate for a sound effect. Of course he bloody does. They run with a shot of a golden retriever devouring the food, seemingly set to a soundtrack of some very enthusiastic cunnilingus.

Natasha shoots down Ellie’s ideas in about the most, yeah, patronising way ever, yeah? It’s valuable, yeah, but shut the fuck up.

Glenn’s sarcastic voiceover recruit steals the show. After his falsetto cat impression, he wearily sighs “Three long years of drama school”.

Vincent and Melody pitch first, with their advert getting one of those big polite laughs. Their Q&A is both professional and knowledgeable, and therefore cut to about eighteen seconds. On the other hand, Leon’s pitch is shown in excruciating detail as he nervously bumbles and bollocks about chunky kitties. Twenty minutes he was up there, lying about the product’s brilliance to people who knew he was full of shit.

We haven’t actually seen their product yet, and we’re fairly confident that they haven’t fed it to a cat, so the bloody thing could make their pets sprout wings for all they knew.

To the boardroom…

Alan can’t wait to stick the boot into crappy CAT-SIZE, the crappy “see their light” slogan and the crappy voiceover in the crappy advert. However, the marketing bods quite like the brand. On the other side of the table, the Every Dog advert was good, while the branding was poor. Never mind the experts, the final decision is with Lord Alan. He waves his arbitrary decision wand, and gives the win to CAT-SIZE.

The “Every” concept was a failure, because, AS THE SODDING VET TOLD THEM AT ABOUT FIVE PAST NINE, not every dog can eat the same food. Karren doesn’t like that the brand makes it sound like a pet isn’t special. Shut up, Karren.

Cue the usual backpedalling over the previously good ideas. Jim gets a grilling from Lord Alan, because he was first to say “Every Dog”. Tom gives a good account of how he’s constantly shot down, before being shot down by Alan.

Rather than bringing back Jim, who Alan has just blamed for the branding, the spineless Vincent chooses Ellie and Natasha. Ellie has been brought back because she “buys dog food”. Alan says “process” a lot, and has a go at Vince for being spineless in Jim’s face.

Natasha finally speaks! “You’re so far up Jim’s arse that you can’t see the wood for the trees”. Those are logs, love.

Vincent lives to fight another day, as dullard Ellie is… fired.

Oh, wait. Vincent is fired too. Bloody hell!

Comments

1. Tim says:

   June 2, 2011 at 11:26 am

   You’d think the Logic PMs would have worked out by now that Tom is usually right when he questions this week’s dodgy strategy. Yes, he’s a bit of an “I told you so” merchant, but it must be galling for him to be the only member of the team who seems to be able to spot the bloody obvious, rather than comment on it afterwards.

   We do like double firings, though. I was just about to throw something at my TV last night, when Sugar finally gave Vince Disney the old heave-ho. Splendid.

   http://slouchingtowardsthatcham.com/2011/06/02/the-apprentice-venture-are-top-dogs-two-fired-after-pet-task-cat-astrophe/
2. Kevin Mills says:

   June 2, 2011 at 12:29 pm

   Everyone keen to discredit the concept of ‘Everydog’, including the vets, seem to have forgotten the existence of Pedigree and Winalot and, yes, PAL. If they’re not aimed at all dogs I don’t know what is.

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