The Apprentice Series 3 - Episode 8


The new Amstrad 'Street Jams' - Snazzy!

"Street is the Word!"

The task was to brand some orthopaedic looking trainers and to develop a short TV advertisement and billboard material.

Opinion
What a brilliant episode for highlighting some of the key character traits in some of the contestants! It is pretty scary that they were trying to flog a trainer at £39.99 to a target market of children who are probably only slightly older than the children making their hands bleed stitching them. Also, a quick surf of shoe wholesalers shows you can buy a trainer of this sort for a mere $4.95 per pair. Pretty tough task as the trainers are clearly disgusting and unlikely to be worn by anybody with any self-respect - regardless of the branding!

Girl's Team: Unfortunately, it was pretty obvious to us sitting in front of our TV sets that both 'Image is Everything' and 'Music is Everything' were both pretty rubbish ideas (not to mention the potential lawsuit from Sprite!), and that the trainer's branding should have been included multiple times in the advert - but trust me that it is a whole lot easier to be an observer! I wasn't sure where Jam came from and, as much as I like Kristina, I thought the logo was pretty rubbish. I was pretty surprised that they didn't make the association between Jam and jamming to put some meaning behind the 'Music is Everything' tag line.

Boy's Team: I thought the idea was pretty good but the logo less so! I loved Simon's various antics, who knew that he was so multi-talented - even if the rapping was relatively awkward viewing. Interesting that the boys managed to slip the word 'street' at least 10 times into their advert and Jam just didn't appear until the end of the girls'. This actually might have been a mistake I would have made and it is a valuable lesson learnt.

Ghazal Asif: Sorry Ghazal, but I thought it was a fair firing I think there were just too many mistakes and changes of direction. However, I thought she was really charming on the 'You're Fired'. Ghazal is someone no one should feel sorry for as she is incredibly successful already for a young lady (and I mean lady) and will learn from this experience - this is definitely not the last we will hear from her.

Katie Hopkins: Thankfully she wasn't quite so evil this week but still pretty unbearable to watch when she was discussing 'accessing Jay's identity' and other rubbish in her pitch to the advertisers, perhaps she should learn that 'you can't bullshit a bullshitter'. The only Katie-ism we saw was a discussion about Kristina's arse; could it be that darling Katie is a little threatened by Kristina? And then the greatest shock of all was when Katie said something positive about Ghazal! I missed exactly what she said as I was busy falling off my chair. I loved the fact that India Knight said she had eyes like a fish and her dress sense was a throw back to the 80's! Can we assume she has been keeping those fish eyes shut for the last 20 years?

Naomi Lay: I thought Naomi was extremely articulate in the boardroom and at last we are seeing that she isn't just a blonde bimbo - the rash assumption some people have been making because she is pretty.

Tre Azam: Again, some brilliant lines like 'being six feet down in bullshit'. Better still was 'there is a fine line between good dancing and shit bollocks dancing'.

Jadine Johnson: Clearly she prefers working with the boys and therefore got rid of Naomi: it worked though! I thought it was interesting that she was surrounded by deeply articulate men and yet still chose herself for the pitch, compounding the error by just reading her lines!

<Read Episode 9>