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The Apprentices Hit Singletons In The Teeth With Greeting Cards

By jimsym on May 7, 2008 in Helene Speight, Jennifer Maguire, Lucinda Ledgerwood, Michael Sophocles, Raef Bjayal, Series 4, Sir Alan Sugar, The Apprentice

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In my previous post on the Greeting Card task I described how Kevin (I Eat Italian I Do) Shaw and his team created the disaster that was the environmental warning card theme.

Let’s move onto the slightly less silly card theme - Singledom, or Singles Day.

Raef Wants To Celebrate Singledom

Michael Sophocles had his team brainstorming ideas for a theme. Then they went off to do market research in card shops. Whilst in the card shops Raef had a sudden mental moment when he said that they should do a theme based on sending cards to single people. My imagination naturally went into a tailspin and I could see cards bearing the words “Yah Boo Sucks, You’re Single I’m Not!” and “Being Single Is Superb” or “Sorry You’re Single” and “Don’t Worry Your Significant Other Is Just Round The Corner.”

Michael goes out to Oxford Street to ask people about Singles Day. They ask two girls who laughingly suggest it should be the day before Valentine’s Day.

Back at base Michael MAKES A DECISION and puts Raef in to do the presentation to the 3 buying companies. The camera then cuts to Raef telling us that “The spoken word is my tool” he also notes that he has the sales skills of persuasion and efficient communication to “full capacity.” I hope those aren’t words that he comes to regret later in the series.

Later at the photo shoot that Jen, Lucinda and Helene are organising Helene makes it clear that everything is her idea but of course she wants their opinion. Lucinda points out that she and Jen are creative too and that it’s not just Helene’s ideas. Then Helene backtracks and says,”that’s not what I’m saying.” yeah right!

Then Michael has a crisis when he’s not sure where an apostrophe goes after “Singles” in “National Singles Day.” After 3.5 hours of debate Michael eventually says, “I’m going to put the apostrophe after the S.” At last, why did it take so long to make a simple decision?

When Raef begins his presentation Clinton’s buyer suggests that the team has missed a point because their singles day clashes badly with Valentines day. After all who wants to try and juggle space and distribution when it’s one of their biggest card days the following day.

After the slight debacle at Clinton’s Raef then goes to Tesco’s buyers and immediately says that they’ve had a positive meeting with the “market leader”, not a good move to suggest Tesco are second best!

Then when the Tesco buyer brings up the same logistics point Clinton’s did Alex goes into overdrive waffling on about people wanting to celebrate being single!

Tesco’s ask the key question - who would buy the card? Afterwards Michael says, “MY DECISION is to remove date of the 13th February.”

The final pitch they make the point that any date can be chosen…

As Alex says so that logistically you can handle it. Nice turn round team.

Apart from anything else neither team seemed to spend any time deciding whether anyone would actually buy the card to send to their friends. Raef did say during one of his presentations that he would send it to several single people he knows!

del.icio.us tags: The Apprentice, BBC, Sir Alan Sugar, Ian Stringer, Shazia Waheb, Lee McQueen, Lindi Mngaza, Alex Wotherspoon, Nicholas De Lacy Brown, Jennifer Celerier, Jennifer Maguire, Raef Bjayal, Claire Young, Lucinda Ledgerwood, Kevin Shaw, Simon Smith, Helene Speight, Sara Dhada, Michael Sophocles