The Apprentice blog: Episode Nine

“Go Big or Go Home”

I was confused by this week’s Apprentice. Team Logic, led by Melody, blew Zoe’s Team Venture out of the water after they got 800,000 orders and Venture received none.

But it was all based on a lie. Jim, pitching for Logic, said they would launch their product with a multi-million pound advertising campaign or by sponsoring the Harry Potter films or suchlike. But these were just empty words. If you’re making stuff up, why think so small? The biscuits have stars on them, why not etch the brand name onto the moon or have an advert with Sir Patrick Moore using the biscuits to hide his modesty in a coquettish burlesque routine?

As I said, I was confused.

But I’ve jumped ahead. The task was, as usual, unfeasibly huge. The teams had two days to invent, brand and sell a new biscuit to three major supermarkets. However, Zoe had a lot of experience in the industry and was quietly confident. After swatting eternal nemesis Susie aside like a ‘yapping puppy’, she set about mobilising her team.

Their focus group liked Tom’s two-biscuits-in-one idea (the greedy swines) which led to the creation of BixMix, a half chocolaty, half oaty biscuit, with the tagline ‘Snap ‘n’ Share’. Zoe and Susie managed to co-operate for just long enough to create what I thought was some classy packaging. Shows what I know.

Helen and her team decided to target their biscuit at children. “How feasible is a biscuit for children?" Jim asked. I’m fairly sure they like them. Having said that, his team seemed determined to make their biscuit as unfeasible as possible. The USP of Special Stars (as their biscuits became known) was that they were a special treat specifically for after school, but with the slogan ‘Any Time is Treat Time’. This from ‘Logic Biscuits’. Sometimes I wonder...

And so to the pitches. For some reason Zoe indulged Melody’s desire to start their pitch with a role play. Unsurprisingly, it went down like a fart in an elevator. The pitches went from bad to worse when the supermarket buyers felt BixMix had no identifiable target market. It wasn’t classy enough for a girls’ night in, yet the packaging was apparently too feminine for men. If there’s one thing I hate, its being emasculated by a biscuit.

Meanwhile, Helen and Jim did the impossible and made me feel sorry for Natasha. In each pitch they would give her daggers and roll their eyes whenever she spoke, using the time in between to tell her to shut up, as things went just as badly for them. Until, that is, Jim told Asda that Special Stars would be the most popular thing ever: “It’ll have more followers on Twitter than Gaga and Bieber combined,” he boasted. Probably.

Despite Lord Sugar giving Jim the Biggest-Bulls**tter-in-the-World award in the Boardroom (Melody looked heart-broken), Asda had still made those 800,000 orders. Helen had won. Again.

So, Zoe brought Tom and Melody, who replaced Susie as Zoe’s main target, back for the boardroom. “I contributed some daring concepts,” boasted Melody. Biscuits as the new popcorn - not sure the increased crunching would go down well in cinemas. Zoe, the perennial sniper of the show, shot Melody down. If she had had the means, she would have done it literally.

If Tom were a biscuit, he would be a Nice Biscuit. Perfectly adequate, but you’d choose a lot of biscuits over him. It was no surprise then, when Lord Sugar was aiming the last rites at him come crunch time. This series has been marked by its unpredictability though, and Sugar turned at the last second and fired Zoe. A little unfair, perhaps, but (please forgive me) I guess that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.

The Apprentice continues Wednesday 9pm BBC1.

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