Lord Sugar shouldn’t have fired Conor – it should have been Aaron

Lord Sugar shouldn’t have fired Conor – it should have been Aaron

Winner of The Apprentice 2016, Alana Spencer, has revealed why she thinks the boys actually had a great idea for kids toothbrushes – and why Conor shouldn’t have got the axe

This week we see both groups challenged to create an electric toothbrush aimed for six to eight year olds with an interactive app alongside it. We had Francesca leading the girls team and for the boys’ team we had Aaron in charge. From the the very first moment, we hear Francesca’s background experience which clearly gave them the girls team a real advantage. I was pretty confident from the start that the girls would stand a very good chance of winning as long as Francesca was a good leader. However, I was quite impressed with Aaron’s performance last week so I was excited to see how he would do leading the tasks for the boys’ team. But I’ll have to say I was less impressed with his performance this week.

I could very much visualise the boys’ idea a lot more from the start, the gender neutral idea is a really good one. They decided to create a magic themed app with the toothbrush as a wand. As a concept, if executed correctly, would have been very strong. But unfortunately this did not happen. The girls had a loose idea of a space themed app but I couldn’t really visualise what they were trying to create. So when it came to designing the product, the girls sub team leader Amy went rogue and went against what their team leader has asked them to do, which was to make the product plain. It was wise that they decided to go against it and add a little bit of fun and brightness to the product. However the risk in doing that without communicating your plans to your project manager is that you end up with a disconnect between your product and your branding, because you’re not always able to pick the phone up and call the other team. It is really important that you follow the team brief which happens at the beginning of the day.

That also goes for the boys team. They had a discussion about making their product gender neutral but later went against it. The boys had the most disappointing logo last week and this time, they had the most disappointing product.  They named their product ‘whiffy’ referring to a mouth. Nobody wants to brush their teeth and then have a ‘whiffy mouth’ nor does anybody want to have an item that looks like a turd anywhere near their mouth. In my opinion, that has got to be a fireable offence. The girls’ logo was much better suited for a young audience. I believe their target audience should have been changed to a much younger crowd such as four year olds, I think that would have better suited their product.

The girls’ logo for a younger demographic was absolutely spot on. I was really impressed. But when it came to the app, I preferred the boys’. If they had put a little more of excitement into their product, it would have been a lot better. Rather than just having a wizard rubbing teeth, maybe they could have had exciting things popping up on the screen to keep the child user engaged.

Francesca is clearly a very confident speaker, I was very impressed with her pitching ability. I was also impressed with Conor’s pitching. I feel like Conor was the wrong person to get fired for sure. He owned the team’s mistake and admitted the app was boring, and explained how they were trying to make a mundane product more enjoyable. That was a good comeback and probably the best pitch out of everyone in the room. The boys lost the challenge and had zero orders while the girls received 11,000 orders. I feel like the boys could have won it they had simply been aware of their design flaws and had admitted they needed to rectify them to make the product much more fun for children. In my opinion, the boys app and concept was the best – apart from their logo of course. They were really on to something, they just made a terrible looking product.

Contrary to my opinion last week, I think Aaron should have gotten fired. Sam stood strong on their im concept – and with a product like that, that’s a terrible idea especially if you’re offered the opportunity to admit your downfall. I feel Nick was more in the background this episode, I wonder if he’s just a bit more quiet and less spoken. The last person I expected to see fired was Conor, so that really surprised me and was a bit of a shame. But I’m sure he’ll be successful with whatever he goes on to do after the show.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alana Spencer
Alana Spencer
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