Junior Apprentices make a big splash

The junior apprentice teams reverted back to boys (Instinct) against girls (Revolution). The task? To choose a bottled water to brand and sell.

And as is usual in the final the finalists got to choose the people who’d been fired in the previous rounds. The end result was that Revolution was composed of girls, except for one boy and Instinct was made up with boys and one girl.

Just to make things difficult the teams were led by joint projects managers. Zoe and Kirsty for Revolution and Tim and Arjun for Instinct.

From the off it was quite clear that Zoe still believed that she ran the whole team and her creativity would be the key to them winning. Meanwhile over at Instinct Tim and Arjun seemed to have a much less combative way of working with each other.

Bottled Water – Which Market to Aim For?

Bottled water is an interesting market considering it’s a purchase that is actually unnecessary and therefore the marketing needs to be cute in order to persuade people to buy your offering.

Tim and Arjun cleverly focussed on the main market segment of 20 to 35 year olds who will casually buy bottles of water as they go. Kirsty and Zoe meanwhile focussed on teenagers as a group that actually I don’t believe really bother about water as much as fizzy drinks. Although I know that almost all schools sell bottled water to their children. I think their market is likely to be a much harder sell and also be much smaller than the demographic that Instinct chose.

Lets Do Focus Groups

Having made the choice of which sectors to aim for both teams went off to meet their chosen focus groups. Zoe’s team really don’t seem to have learnt the lesson that you don’t lead your focus group into answering the way you want. Which meant that the answers they got back were of questionable validity for trying to create a brand to entice that market.

Tim chatted to some people in a gym and asked them quite good and appropriate questions and ended up with quite a nice little idea of calling the bottled water “a bottle of water.”

Zoe Dives Into Design and Music Composing

Is there really no end to Zoe’s talent? She pushes through the name for the bottled water – Drip Drop. Which personally I don’t like at all. Then she comes up with the design for the name on the bottle and tells Kirsty exactly how it should be. Even though that’s the task that they agreed Kirsty would do. Finally she tells the composer (who actually composes music for a living) how she wants the music to sound. She really needs to let go a bit and learn to delegate to people who are experts. Mind you I’ve been into some businesses that are run by adults who could do with learning that lesson.

Revolution’s Ad Waters Down Their Message

Kirsty directs the video that Revolution make to advertise Drip Drop.

The ad is set in an city/urban area and looks fairly run down. It has two small boys playing with a bottle of the new water. Then a girl comes along and pinches the bottle of water from them. Which sends the message “it’s ok to steal the bottle of water.”

To give Kirsty her due she did try and get the bottle label into the picture but unfortunately the name wrapped round the label so it wasn’t all obvious on the ad. Kirsty’s solution was to squash the bottle so the whole label showed…

Instinct’s Ad Surges Ahead

After Tim’s brainwave on keeping the bottle of water simple, Arjun comes up with a very simple design for the bottle label – it looks clean and inviting.

Over at Instinct the ad director was Arjun and he was given the added bonus of another actor that Tim had booked by mistake. So thinking quickly Arjun wrote a small part for the extra actor to incorporate him into the ad. The ad itself was actually really very good and thought of by Tim. It involved someone dressed smartly in a suit breaking into a run and taking his clothes off as he goes. Until eventually he ends up in his boxers and as he passes someone he picks up a bottle of water and gives them a pound. Excellent work, although to be picky the bottle price was meant to be 50 pence and where would you hold a £1 coin if you’ve only got boxers on?

Arjun did a superb job in managing the whole process and for me this was the point where it was obvious that he should win.

Spitalfields Market Pop-up Shops

Revolution and Instinct are given two retail spaces for their bottled water launch.

Zoe brings in the Graffiti Kings to give their Drip Drop bottled water some teen street-cred. Then of course Zoe shows the Kings exactly what she wants the graffiti to look like, although she doesn’t think to let them have any of the brand related information, such as logo, font, colours or anything of that nature.

Over at Instinct Tim comes up with a great idea to have giant bottles painted on one wall. I think Tim has shown himself to be very creative and a real ideas man.

The Teams Present Their Bottled Water

Lord Sugar invites experts to the launch of the bottled water. And those experts include people from Britvik, Evian, Drench Aqua Amore, Volvic and Nestle Waters.

Arjun and Tim present first, unfortunately they both read from notes which makes the presentation slightly stilted. That said they do a great job, which is underline by the Tesco drinks manager who says they’ve really thought it through.

Over at Revolution Zoe does an excellent presentation without notes and Kirsty contributes well, although not as fluently as Zoe, possibly because she’s holding the clipboard with her notes on.

The Final Junior Apprentice Boardroom

The thing that lets Zoe and Kirsty down is the colours on the bottle, as was noted after the yellow and black just make it look as though it should be petrol, or other hazardous chemical. Choosing a market that you have to educate is almost always risky and was a bad decision. And the final nail must have been the message that a girl can steal a bottle of water. The result was that Zoe and Kirsty were fired and given a couple of tips for their later working life. So goodbye and goodluck – maybe the real Apprentice next time?

Arjun and Tim obviously worked well together. Both of them were willing to let each other get on with their allocated tasks. What’s more the professionals were highly impressed with what Tim and Arjun did. Consequently, despite stumbling over their pitch the boys win.

And when asked why they should win the ultimate prize Arjun had obviously prepared for exactly that question and ran through the major things he achieved over the last few weeks. He also explained exactly how much else he did, including his computer business.

On the other hand Tim highlighted that he’d not expected to win and had come up with a lot of the excellent ideas, such as the “credit crunch lunch.” He too talked of his extra activities.

Finally Lord Sugar puts them out of their misery and awards the first Junior Apprentice title to Arjun. And as Lord Sugar says he’s not going to worry about the runner-up because they will do well what ever they get into.

Arjun richly deserved the title because he’d blended in with every team he worked with and did his jobs effectively. Then when brought out into a leadership role he