The Apprentice Are All At The Seaside

The Apprentices meet Sir Alan at The 02 Arena in Greenwich, aka the Millennium Dome. There the teams are told that they’re going to re-brand Margate, within 2 days

Debra nominates herself very firmly as project manager for one team, telling Howard who suggests he’d quite like to be a project manager that he can be a sub-team manager!

Meanwhile over in the other team Yasmina suggests she is the best candidate for project manager as re-branding requires a multitude of skills and she has them!

Re-Branding Margate Is No Picnic

Margate already has an established brand in the eyes of the people who visit. And the BBC camera angles don’t paint a particularly nice picture of Margate as a pleasant place to say. Although the sea and the sands look marvelous.

The teams re-branding need to produce a set o posters and a leaflet.

They then have to present to VIP residents of Margate, including the mayor and another presentation to industry experts. The winning team being the one which impresses both groups the most.

Margate Recreated As A Gay Holiday Destination

Immediately Debra hears the suggestion that they should re-brand Margate as a gay holiday destination she bulldozes on with that thought. Looks like she’s taken over from Phillip as the Bulldozer.

Anyone, other than The Apprentices, would have considered who they were selling the concept to: Margate residents and industry experts.

Debra And Howard Make A Casting Call

Debra and Howard get the bit firmly between their teeth and stay in London to cast people for same sex couples for the leaflet and poster. Cue plenty of shots of Nick looking bemused as models are asked to hold hands and drape arms over shoulders.

Meanwhile James and Mona go down to Margate and search out the gay scene. Mona spending time in what looks like a very quiet club.

Debra Turns A Deaf Ear

Debra tries to cram a lot of text into the team poster. Howard says that too many words is a bad thing as people wont be able to read a lot of text. Debra, of course,doesn’t listen.

And because she and Howard spend so long on the posters it leaves them with a miniscule amount of time to write the leaflet. The final leaflet is pathetic as they run out of time.

Margate Goes Gay

Howard presents Margayte to the local people and to the industry experts. It’s immediately obvious that there was a lack off planning in the production of everything.  The posters looked very amateurish for the following reasons:

• The posters looked like adverts for a very poor restaurant
• The photos were too busy
• The photos could have been for anywhere – not just Margate
• There was too much text (the experts suggest 10 words at most)
• The rainbow UK logo was too big
• There was no use of blue skies and sea – Margate is besides the sea

And just when you think the Apprentices can’t get any worse they manage to pull the rabbit out of the hat and show the awful unfinished leaflet that Howard and Debra claim isn’t unfinished, it’s just to give local business the opportunity to advertise on it.

Don’t make me laugh! You don’t leave 3 pages of a six page leaflet blank, and certainly not the back of it!

A very poor attempt at re-branding that wasn’t managed well. In addition, it looked as though the teams had not agreed (and written down) the photos to go for or what should go into the leaflet.

Margate’s For Families

Over in Yasmina’s team Lorraine puts a compelling case for a family resort and the team agree to go with that.

So Ben and Lorraine hurry down to Margate with Ben eager to demonstrate that he can hold two fingers on each hand to make a “photo frame” in such a way that he looks like a complete pillock. Rather than letting an expert  like a professional photographer set up the shot Ben gets involved, and misses out on getting a child into the beach shots.

The pair get busy setting up models with the various activities that Margate has to offer. And their catchy slogan is, “Margate through children’s eyes.” Actually quite a reasonable slogan although they completely fail to capitalise on it throughout their eventual pitches and in the posters and the leaflet.

Yasmina Doesn’t Quite Get Posters

Yasmina and Kate look a bit worried when Ben’s photos come through as they’d wanted to use large expanses of background for the text.

The main problem that Yasmina and Kate have is that they haven’t taken even a little look at other posters at other resorts. If they had they’d have seen that actually there’s not much text on them. And of course Lorraine points this out, correctly, to Yasmina who isn’t happy with what she says.

Yasmina’s background in producing leaflets and menus for her restaurant pays off and she produces a reasonable leaflet.

Family Resort Margate Re-brands As… A Family Resort

Kate presents the poster and leaflet to the experts and Ben defends his pictures.  The leaflet actually looks pretty good. Certainly far ahead of Debra’s team.

Back To The Boardroom

Yasmina’s team Ignite score 7 from the experts and 7 from the Margate residents and win against Empire who score 4 from each group.

This particular task failure can easily be placed completely at Debra’s door due to pathetic time management and inadequate planning of the task before running off and doing stuff.

However, as Sir Alan says we’ve now reached a point where he can look at past performance and take it into account for the firing decision.

He decides that Mona and James have been back seat passengers and fires Mona.

Was The Apprentice Firing Fair?

I wanted Debra to go because she was so completely rubbish at helping the team work out what to do, managing the team and actually working out what to do. After all wen you’re project manager you can’t be an expert in everything and you need to listen to opinion and expert help. Specially Howards suggestion about the text on the posters.

I do agree with Sir Alan’s summing up and I’ve thought that Mona has been a complete waste of time during the tasks and her defence of herself so this firing is fair.

Who’s The Favourite To Win At The Moment?

Kate didn’t particularly cover herself with glory this time. However, she still remains the front runner as far as I can see.