Tag Archives: James McCullagh

So, after seven weeks, from twelve candidates, two remained: James McCullagh and Zara Brownless. Here we had two “chalk and cheese” candidates: the rough with the smooth, with different strengths to compliment their contrasting personal styles. The task was to create a brand new online video game, to create a viral video advert, and to pitch their games and videos to a large group of gaming professionals, from the very top tiers of the industry.  As usual with the final,...

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  Last night’s Young Apprentice was truly exciting. As usual, we saw plenty of examples of poor, good and superb performance, but my overall assessment matches Lord Sugar’s: the six young people competing were all extraordinary examples of the talent that their generation can field.  I am afraid i will have to get just a little socio-political by the time I get to the end of this week’s assessment. But first, down to the business of recording the basics… The...

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This week’s task was the “go and buy 10 random things for the best price” exercise – or procurement, as it is more formally known. As is the case for too many real-life procurement departments, best price is all, with no prizes for a much better product at a marginally higher price.  However, the basic rule is “know the rules” and Lord Sugar was clear as always with this particular task.  As long as the product meets the specification, then...

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This week’s task was dominated by the personalities of the two team leaders – selected by Lord Sugar, who clearly had a shrewd idea what would happen. Let’s however start with a few raw details about the task itself. The teams had to create a brand and a TV advert for an antiperspirant/deodorant targeted at the teenage market, and pitch it to a handful of advertising execs at leading agency, JWT. The teams were picked as: Atomic: Zara leading Hayley,...

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Trust was the issue at the heart of last night’s show; but along the way, we saw real evidence of learning. The task was a familiar one to fans of the show: look at a range of goods pitched by the vendors, select which ones you believe you can sell best and hope to be the team chosen to sell them.  Then sell your socks off.  In last night’s show, the target market was the over 50s, at an over...

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This week’s episode saw the teams separated by the smallest of margins (less than 3% of profit).  It also saw the final phases of the boardroom play out exactly as I was expecting.  My notes were constantly a few minutes ahead and I concur 100% with Lord Sugar’s assessments this evening – which I don’t always do. And, whilst three of the women are not getting as much airtime as some of the other contenders, we are starting to see...

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There was a lot of interest to pick out of last night’s Young Apprentice, so let’s get the facts out of the way. The teams, Atomic (a slightly depleted boys’ team) and Kinetic (the girls) were set the task to come up with an innovative product for the parent and baby market and pitch is to three leading retailers: Mothercare (the global retailer), JoJo Maman Bebe (the niche retailer) and John Lewis (the department store). The teams chose Lewis Roman...

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Last night we were introduced to the twelve young people whose Apprentice hopes we will be following for the next eight weeks. The six girls and six boys immediately got down to picking team names, settling on: Boys: “Atomic” Girls: “Kinetic” With Kinetic, the girls managed to find a name already selected by a 2007 US Apprentice Team, as my table of Apprentice project team names shows. So, with that introduction over, what did we learn on this first task:...

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