“Lights, Camera and………Shoulder action”

As if it wasn’t blindingly obvious in episode one, the second instalment of the Apprentice makes it clear this is (as we all know) about entertainment and not boardroom brilliance.  If it was about the country’s elite business people who effortlessly glided through the tasks making thousands then it would be as dull as dishwater and probably not lasted two years, never mind 10.

The entertainment this week was about wearable technology so of course the apprentices came up with “products” that won’t have the directors at Apple worried anytime soon.  Having decided on a marginally better team name than their first which meant “decline”, Team Tenacity’s ladies were determined to go for an all-singing-all-dancing jacket that would do lots of things – light up, warm up (and cool down) courtesy of solar panels in the shoulders and charge up (the mobile in the pocket). 

The latter idea had legs.  The ability to charge up a phone whilst on the move (literally) is a great idea.  Instead of sticking to one new product development idea and do it well they opted for a mishmash of bits of technology which essentially paid homage to Dallas with a dull jacket with a couple of fairy lights in the lapels and the Sue Ellen shoulder pads with a curious nod to Red Dwarf by virtue of some stripy solar panels on the shoulders.    

The New Product Development (NPD) process has a vital stage in it called screening.  There you weed out dodgy product ideas the same way that Lord Sugar weeds candidates.  On the plus side, at least including the heating system did allow Sarah 'get your make-up on, girls' Dales the opportunity to allow two men touch up her stomach during the pitch.

Team Tenacity won the day by a slim margin – about £200 in orders.  It was really only a victory because the Summit team gentleman failed to get any orders at all with their creepy grey jumper with a camera. 

Of course the boys weren’t so dim-witted not to realise there was “summit wrong” and the prototype looked pants but the show must go on and you believe in your product and sell it to your market.  Right?  Wrong!  “I wouldn’t personally go out in it” exclaimed Daniel the dreadful salesman in the pitch.  In fact Daniel agreed with all the criticisms levelled by the clients – so much so, that he would have replied yet again “that’s a very good point” had the client stated “we believe you’ve wasted our time today with such a stupid product”.  Reckons he’s “sales sales sales sales” but I think it’s more like “fails fails fails fails”.

In his pathetic defence of this grey sweatshirt with light-up writing and a pervy camera, Scott, the PM who was fired, said it was not for secretly filming girls in nightclubs but for sports.  The post-mortem show “Apprentice You’re Fired” debated this and sarcastically laughed that lots of sports require the player to wear a big baggy sweater.   Hang on, stop laughing there are two small target niche markets of darts players and fishermen that I can think of.   I am sure a premium pricing strategy would work a treat here as there are countless darts players out there wishing to record every mind-numbingly boring throw. 

The other firing this week happened before the boys even got to the losers’ café for some builders tea.  Robert “high end fashion” Goodwin bottled at being project manager and it cost him dearly.  In response to concerns expressed by John Lewis about the secret filming, he exclaimed “privacy is history” so I am delighted for him that he has left the competition.  If the News of the World was ever re-launched, he would have missed out on the job of a lifetime and having his name up in lights.