Lord Sugar last night told Glenn he had a problem grasping his unique selling point and a social club was not a business.
‘I’ve never come across an engineer that can turn their hand to business. You’re fired’, he said.
Glenn’s team- Venture, failed the task as they did not secure enough advertising space in their freemium magazine for the over sixties called ‘HIP Replacement’, which subsequently saw PM Jim, Glen and Susan go head to head in the boardroom after Zoe was sent back to the contestants’ house.
Sugar saved Jim as he said he had seen a ‘glimmer’ in him he like, despite calling the contestant deflective and manipulative, and placing the blame on him for the failure of the task, which Sugar put down to not negotiating with their first client Carat on rate card prices. A huge mistake for a launch of a new mag, claimed Sugar. He said to Jim the penny obviously dropped afterwards as he offered reduced prices to the two other agencies-Mediacom and Maxus, with Medicom spending £16.850 and Maxus £12,000 on advertising. Carat placed no orders for ad space.
Susan also narrowly escaped being fired with her past successes being her saving grace. ‘You need to show me you can do what you say on paper’, Sugar told the 21-year-old. He warned Susan that she needs to voice her opinions more rather than be a mouse, as describer by Jim, after she said she had told the PM to drop his prices and advised against the title HIP Replacement.
‘That name was bad’, confessed Sugar. It back fired. You read it as exactly what it means. ‘Out with the old, in with the new’, is even worse, like out with the old hip in with the new one.’
The features are also condescending he told them. The technology article about phones tells readers how to make a phone call, are you taking the piss? I’m in that age group and I know how to dial a number. And the cover, he said, was like Viz with old people wearing cardigans, so much for the sixties being the new thirties, as the mag’s strapline reads.
However, Sugar claimed that he was surprised the team had lost as they choose a good niche market, the over sixties, whereas the winners Logic, who secured £9,00 of ads with Maxus, £7,500 with Mediacom and a whopping £60,000, the whole magazine, from Carat, created a tacky lads mag-Covered, that had no USP and was described by advertisers as stuck in the nineties. It doesn’t reflect today’s male they argued.
‘Who would want to advertise next to a feature called Blow Your Load’, said Sugar, who couldn’t understand how the team secured a win.
Next week the contestants must use the French language skills to buy objects in Paris, phrase books at the ready.
