The Apprentice - Season 17 - Thread 2 - The Season With A lot of (Lip) Filler!

[RicciardoPerez]

Thread 2 :)

Looking forward to catching up on tonight's ep! What was it again? A children's cartoon?

[PlaitBilledDuckyPuss]

@TitsInAbsentia

I was trying to remember what poop gate was last year, wasn't there another thing - not just the toothbrush?

Yes - the logo for the health spa on the cruise ship or whatever it was, in the week preceding the tooth brush.

[RiktheButler]

That was fucking dreadful. The winning team won because the other team managed to be even more shit! I don't take the show seriously at all, but if they want it to be remotely real, they should judge the candidates input and actions rather than just going on bottom line

[TaraMock]

Sohail absolutely deserved to go, he was the worst pm this year. If he had let Marnie lead the branding team I think they would have had a chance of winning.

[AnImaginaryCat]

I do like Dani's negotiate skills as a project manager.

Dani: I think it should be [insert bad idea]
Other person: Well I'm not..
Dani: [interupting] Perfect.

I'm not entirely convinced Sohail was in it for the first few weeks. We were calling him Mystery Man here. 🤣

[secular39]

@TaraMock

Sohail absolutely deserved to go, he was the worst pm this year. If he had let Marnie lead the branding team I think they would have had a chance of winning.

Marnie is too controlling.

[Gingerkittykat]

I can't believe Dani and her lips survived another week.

There's no stand out candiddate this year but I'm looking forward to seeing more from Megan and Victoria. Unfortunately, I have seen that they are both sweet shop owners. Megan's online store and instagram look like they have been taken down and Victoria essentially sells pick and mix for £8.99 per 500g.

[Fizbosshoes]

I think that they often fail on kids related task because they don't have/know any kids to know appropriate age ranges.....but then I remembered the poo-brush and that was Aaron's idea and he did have kids!!😂
Having said that, I think they should have done a lunchbox and maybe a TV ad. They complained that both apps were "boring" or too simple. I haven't the faintest idea about apps but I'm pretty sure most aren't generated in a day...? What can they actually achieve in such a short space of time?

[billysboy]

I would love one of the candidates to fire back having been fired with a line or tow which isn’t “ thank you for the opportunity “ and a bit more like “fuck u “

[PlaitBilledDuckyPuss]

I would have thought children in the age bracket they were targeting would want lunch boxes branded to existing TV or film characters - not random caterpillars or pirates. Obviously the Apprentice teams can't do that due to copyright issues so in that respect, it's a hard ask.

[barcodescanner]

Victoria essentially sells pick and mix for £8.99 per 500g.

500g would cost £6.75 where I work

[thecatsthecats]

The caterpillar growing concept at least had the potential of being a tamogotchi or pokemon style game. "GroPets" - they get bigger and stronger as they move through the levels.

[GLADragss]

the apprentice candidates can open any business with sugar, it doesn’t have to be their existing idea. One of this year’s candidates did an AMA on Reddit and explained this

[Annamariefl]

Fed up with how the winners are being decided - by refunds asked for last week and fake orders this week (would a retailer really not be concerned about copyright issues with the caterpillar on the too small lunch box?).

It feels fixed so they can steer who is going - before they are steered to the two to bring back into the boardroom.

[AnImaginaryCat]

Also (if it were a real order) they'd hardly order the caterpillar lunchbox item intending to market it at 6 to 8 year old would they. Maybe they might oder it thinking it can be shifted off to preschool age - but that wasn't the objective and therefore the team failed.

I find it hard to believe every single candidate can be this bad in every single task. They are being set up to fail.

Things like no communication between subteams on decisions that affect the other teams decisions. Having to pay a chef a large fee just to get ingredients and no instruction on how to prepare it. Or consulting focus groups and not being able to act off what they found.

I'm fairly sure none of that used to happen in Apprentices of old.

Except maybe the focus group bit, which I think also happen after the product was made. I mean is it just there to show them what they did wrong and how awkward the presentations are going be!)

if they had presented a (well mentioned) prototype to the age group before creating the actual app or lunch box they would have realised they had it wrong and totally changed it made improvements

Again it annoyed me that Suralan and Co focused on how negative something is when it was really a reaction to a negative thing. (Like the saying there was a restricted number of glasses of water was worse than deciding to restrict the number of glasses last week.)

They mentioned several times it was a bad thing whatsherface said one child said they'd buy the lunchbox. What should be the answer to "how many children would want (their parents) to buy it?" other than "one"?

Why focus on the question being answered truthfully as the failure, rather than on the action that led to only one child wanting it.

[BogRollBOGOF]

Smiggle does brilliantly at this age group, bright, shiny and gimicky.

It's an awkward target age for the candidates' briefs as they tend to polarise into heavily gendered preferences which would bring up criticism that they're halving their market, and aren't being inclusive.

The candidates always hit too young though and end up with something for pre-schoolers.

[Sunshineparasol]

They mentioned several times it was a bad thing whatsherface said one child said they'd buy the lunchbox. What should be the answer to "how many children would want (their parents) to buy it?" other than "one"?

Yes, I wondered that.

[Sunshineparasol]

I think they should have done Space, but not cutesy space like a robot cartoon, something more educational - planets, maybe.

I loved the rap though

[NancyPickford]

I've been studying Dani for weeks trying to figure out who it was she reminded me of. It came to me last night - Piella Bakewell from 'A Matter of Loaf and Death'.

[PlaitBilledDuckyPuss]

They mentioned several times it was a bad thing whatsherface said one child said they'd buy the lunchbox. What should be the answer to "how many children would want (their parents) to buy it?" other than "one"?

They could have said '11%' which sounds marginally less bad!

[PlaitBilledDuckyPuss]

@BogRollBOGOF

Smiggle does brilliantly at this age group, bright, shiny and gimicky.

It's an awkward target age for the candidates' briefs as they tend to polarise into heavily gendered preferences which would bring up criticism that they're halving their market, and aren't being inclusive.

The candidates always hit too young though and end up with something for pre-schoolers.

They could have gone down the pink, sparkly unicorn route and if challenged pointed out that there was nothing to stop boys choosing pink - as long as they didn't say they were targeting girls it would have been hard for the panel to argue without falling into gender-stereotyping theselves. Although in the real world it would be mostly girls buying it, it's not age-specific - I've seen adult women with pink sparkly unicorn stuff!

[TaraMock]

@PlaitBilledDuckyPuss

They mentioned several times it was a bad thing whatsherface said one child said they'd buy the lunchbox. What should be the answer to "how many children would want (their parents) to buy it?" other than "one"?

They could have said '11%' which sounds marginally less bad!

To which my next question would be 11% of how many? 1 out of 9? 11 out of 100? It's shit either way.

[timetogetlost]

Why on earth does everything have to have an app anyway?

[cariadlet]

An app was a particularly stupid idea for this task.

6 - 8 year olds use their lunchboxes at school. Most won't take phones to school and even if they did, they wouldn't be allowed to use them at school, let alone while they were eating.

[TaraMock]

I've just caught up with You're Fired now, and I have to say he's looking mighty fine on it!

[thecatsthecats]

@cariadlet

An app was a particularly stupid idea for this task.

6 - 8 year olds use their lunchboxes at school. Most won't take phones to school and even if they did, they wouldn't be allowed to use them at school, let alone while they were eating.

They also happily quote "250k will be spent entirely on development" if an app is proposed in the final.

(not true, incidentally)

But why ask candidates to demonstrate a very specific set of skills that they won't accept a business plan for?

At least with cooking, there's usually a couple of food based businesses!