Week 5, and Sugs has commandeered a big screen at Wembley. The task is to brand some anti- perspirant, tenuously linked to the location because crowds gather there, and crowds sweat. Clever.

Zara is managing Team A, with Haya, Hayley and Harry H. Harry M leads Gbemi, Lizzie and James.
Harry M takes to his job with patronising enthusiasm, seeing it as a licence to ignore everyone else. Immediately, he’s decided that they’re branding for women – presumably with one eye on the hotties that he’ll inevitably rope in to his TV commercial. Despite James’ whinging, he forces them to come up with a name. “Vanity” wins, for some reason. Harry wants an advert where men are like puppies, sniffing at ladies. He definitely has a regular dominatrix.

Their branding meeting sees Gbemi and Lizzie heckling every idea put in front of them, while a bored designer tits about with some clipart. Eventually they come out with a black bottle, featuring a mirror for no reason at all.

James and Harry M sort out the TV commercial. There’s no plan or storyboard, so the co-directors bicker over every minor detail, eventually cobbling together a bit featuring a nerdy girl spraying the product around a dingy nightclub. Probably an Ikon.

In their pitch, Lizzie nervously answers some questions, while the advert draws bemused laughter. “Kids today are image obsessed”, says Lizzie, as the camera cuts to bank-manager-turned-hobo James.

On Zara’s team, they come up with an Apprentice favourite: Our target audience will be EVERYBODY! And they shall jump about on hills and skip in the park, and we’ll have world peace. Except this time, when the focus group hate the idea and late in the day, they scrap their idea. Instead, they have RAW. An orange and silver can that resembles a thermos.

Their advert features a guy dancing in a gym, and they shot so many takes that he was sweating like a [thing] in an [inappropriate place]. It’s all very cheesy, but y’know, it’s no more cringeworthy than a lot of the crap that actually makes it onto the telly. Annoyingly too, their pitch is well delivered and not too excruciating.

The Boardroom

The RAW concept annoys Alan, who associates Raw with an irritant, and wrong for a deodorant. Hayley has a whinge about “film-making expert” Zara shooting down her every idea.

Sugs head-bops along to the J Lo backing track on Harry M’s advert, and to prove that he “gets” what they were doing, explains the joke in piss-simple terms. She’s a nerd! She wears the deodorant! (Two) men flock to her! Unfortunately, the branding was poor and the execution weak, so they’re in the firing line.

In the café, Harry M listens to the others bicker, and pretends that he’s above it all. He does it in the most condescending way he can, just to make sure they’re all riled up and keep arguing. He then sits back on the moral high ground and smiles, like the sociopath we’re certain he is.

James blames Harry M for forcing them to come up with a name before the concept. Gbemi is blamed for the “insipid” can –black, with a clipart mirror and some tinfoil stuck on.

Harry M does his vague winding up of James for Alan’s benefit, telling him “James, there were points when you were very disruptive.”

Because Lizzie’s pitch was fine, she’s safe and Gbemi and James are brought back.

James vigorously denies being disruptive, until Gbemi confirms that there was a specific outburst. He then changes tack and tries to defend being disruptive. Should have pounced on that, Harry.

Despite the usual moaning about Harry M being a pain in the arse and James being negative, the entire problem with the task was the crap packaging, so Gbemi is gone.

Except really, the fault was with Harry M not coming up with a coherent branding idea, like the advertising executives said. That if he’d sent Gbemi and Lizzie off with a proper brand, they’d have had a better can. And why does Lizzie get away with it, just because of her pitch? If the fault was completely with the can, then Harry M should have brought her back to fully determine who had doodled it wrong. So Harry M got it wrong there, and could be fired for that. Ah, never mind, Harry M makes for better telly.

Comments

1. Tim says:

   November 22, 2011 at 2:50 pm

   I had no real problem with Sugar keeping Harry M over Gbemi, only I just wish he had said that he was taking all five tasks into consideration, not just this one. Harry M certainly makes better telly, but he’s also the best seller in the group and he is clearly hugely ambitious – both qualities Sugar wants in whoever he invests in. Gbemi did … well, what did she do exactly? She won the parent-and-baby task in spite of her poor leadership and pitching. She pointed out everything everyone else did wrong, without ever really contributing anything meaningful herself. And she scowled all the time, which got a bit wearing.

   Did she deserve to go this week? Arguably not. But was she ever going to win? Not in a million years.

   http://slouchingtowardsthatcham.com/2011/11/22/young-apprentice-raw-potential-wins-as-vanitys-not-so-grand-design-causes-a-stink/

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