| The Apprentice episode | |
| Week Six | |
|---|---|
| Version: | UK Series |
| Series: | Series 3 |
| Task: | Advertising trainers |
| Project Managers: | Jadine (Eclipse) Ghazal (Stealth) |
| Team Changes: | Naomi moves to Stealth. |
| Fired: | Ghazal |
| Airdate: | May 16th 2007 |
| Series Three Tasks: | |
| |
Week Eight saw the teams producing an advertising campaign for trainers, then pitching their concept to a group of advertising executives. Sir Alan warned the teams that the winning campaign would have to have a strong theme, and a clear advert that made the customers interested in the trainers.
The Task[]
Eclipse[]
Sir Alan considered Jadine to have "slipped into the background" in the previous few weeks, and made her the team leader of Eclipse. Her first decision was to effectively fire Naomi and move her over to Stealth.
Tre had the most advertising experience out of the remaining team members, and suggested a theme of "Street" trainers. To attract people to the idea, he suggested donating 10% of their overall profits to youth centres - though Jadine later changed this to 10% of the £39.99 retail price, reasoning that customers would want to know exactly how much they were donating.
The team decided to produce a hip-hop style music video with rapid editing and hand-held shots and a backing rap, though their casting session ended badly, and while they recruited a few dancers, they weren't able to find a leading actor that had the right dancing experience. As a result, Simon ended up doing the dancing and singing the rap. Their advert had many close-up shots of the trainers and mentioned the brand name several times in the rap, and ended by showing their promise to donate 10% of the retail price.
Stealth[]
After pleading for a chance to be a project manager in the previous week's boardroom, Ghazal was appointed team leader of Stealth. Jadine's decision to remove Naomi from her team gave Stealth a theoretical advantage, in that they had two advertising experts (Naomi and Katie), versus only one (Tre) on Eclipse.
The team's initial research suggested that youths buy trainers because of their image and branding. As a result, they decided to form their campaign around the idea of "Image is Everything." Katie and Naomi were assigned to direct the TV advert, while Ghazal and Kristina worked on the presentation and poster. Just before the start of production on these though, Ghazal abruptly decided to change the entire theme, this time to "Music is in your Soul." The trainers ended up being branded "Jam," and their television advert was much more artistic in direction, though only had two very brief shots of the trainers. Their campaign also made frequent mention of their hypothetical target consumer, "Jay," who was a music loving male in his late teenage/early 20s.
The Boardroom[]
Sir Alan seemed quite pleased with Eclipse's advert, and made humorous comments about Simon's dancing and singing abilities (or lack thereof). However, while he considered the 10% donation to be a good idea in principle, he thought that donating 10% of the retail price was the wrong decision, since it meant that people were effectively buying a £36 pair of trainers and being forced to hand over another £4 to charity, which Sir Alan pointed out consumers might not be happy with. He effectively agreed with Tre and told them that 10% of their profits would have been a better idea.
Stealth then showed their advert and Katie encouraged Sir Alan to "think like Jay." After the advert screening however, it immediately became obvious that Sir Alan was not at all impressed. He commented that it looked more like it was advertising a boy band than trainers, and despite Ghazal and Katie's attempts to promote their music theme, that it had no relevant theme at all. The advertising executives agreed with Sir Alan's assessment, meaning that despite Eclipse's error with the donation amount, they had handily won the task. Their reward was being shown how to mix (and drink) cocktails in the American Bar at the Savoy.
Eclipse returned to the boardroom, and Sir Alan expressed his disbelief that a team with so much advertising expertise had produced such an unimpressive campaign (though Katie still insisted that she was proud of their work). Despite Ghazal accusing both Naomi and Kristina of being overly negative and speaking positively of Katie's contribution, she still bought Katie back in, along with Naomi.
It soon became obvious in the final boardroom that Ghazal considered Naomi solely responsible for the defeat, as she furiously attacked Naomi's abilities and tried to make her answer leading questions on her contribution to the task, which Sir Alan quickly put a stop to. While Ghazal did not attack Katie, (making it obvious that she was trying to force Sir Alan to fire Naomi) Katie did not speak up in Ghazal's defence either, and instead asked to be made team leader herself for the next task. This caused Sir Alan to recall Ghazal's claim that she could deliver as team leader in the previous week, and he told her that while he had previously suspected that she was too young and needed more experience, he was now positive that she was simply a weak candidate. "You asked me to think like Jay," he told Katie, "Well, I'm thinking like Jay, and Jay says your advert sucks. And Ghazal, Jay says you're fired!"