Tom Beasley reviews the latest episode of The Apprentice, in which the two teams were tasked with branding and advertising a cactus-based shampoo. Things got a little hairy…
Advertising tasks on The Apprentice are usually pretty easy to predict, with a runaway director derailing their team’s chances by running around like Terrence Malick trying to flog some pound shop tat they brewed up in a dodgy manufacturing plant the night before. This time around, the task was a little different, as Lord Sugar gave the teams a shampoo infused with cactus oil and asked them to brand and market the product. After the intriguing decision to mix the genders of the teams last night, Lord Sugar returned to a battle of the sexes format.
The boys at Team Versatile chose “Swiss army knife of business skills” Richard as PM and decided to create a product for their own market, taking the cactus as their cue for “Western”. Meanwhile, there was a turf war over at Connexus, with hair extension specialist Aisha bizarrely shouting down clearly more qualified hair salon owner Charleine in order to take up the leadership role. After a brief discussion, Aisha opted to market their hair product at women over the age of 45, under the distinctly unappealing name “Desert Secret”.
Richard’s leadership style was the opposite of that executed by April on last night’s episode, allowing everyone to have their say. Of course, the fact that this would help him to create scapegoats later was pure coincidence. Versatile did however do some solid work at this point of the task, creating a sleek, simple black design with a subtle cactus incorporated into the brand name. This simplicity was echoed in their digital billboard, which was presented in stylish black and white, albeit without much to render it remarkable. Their TV advert followed the same style, albeit with the “Western” name more or less an afterthought at this point.
Stunned at the choice of young models to promote their product targeting the “grey pound”, Ruth stepped forward to model for the Connexus billboard, in poses that came across more as irritated librarian than stylish model. Aisha oversaw the bottle design and decided to feature a cactus flower rather than the plant itself, burying the product’s unique selling point. Things weren’t looking good for the girls and a bland, wordy television advert, alongside an eye-wateringly dull pitch from Natalie would prove to be the final nails in their coffin. By the time Scott chose to pitch without prompt cards and suffered an excruciating brainfart as a result, the boys had essentially already won.
Versatile came in for ample praise in the boardoom, with Lord Sugar calling their campaign one of the best in the show’s history, despite it mostly consisting of naked blokes running their hands through their hair. Aisha chose dull pitcher Natalie and ideas woman Vana to square off in the final boardroom, but it was entirely clear that it was the project manager who was for the chop, largely for her unforgivable sidelining of the clearly expert Charleine.
This was a fun episode, but one in which the writing was on the wall for Team Connexus from fairly early in the task. There are still very few candidates who stick out as being particularly talented, except perhaps the rather sensible Selina, and Nick Hewer’s facial expressions are sorely missed. Claude Littner just hasn’t made the same impact yet.
Next week sees the always entertaining task in which the teams spend a day legging it around trying to find items they’ve never even heard of and negotiating terribly. It should be a good one.
Tom Beasley – Follow me on Twitter for movies, wrestling and jokes about David Cameron.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng&v=I4qvd6xJlpE
Originally published October 17, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
