Alan Sugar thought she should have been bought back to the board room for the final 3 and as good as let it be known that she was skating on thin ice and then the Your Fired Programme picked that up as well, saying she was the one who got away I think, why?

She came up with a brilliant name for the all in one product, Blitz. She told Alex to go for lighter/brighter colours to which he ignored. She told him that it wouldn't look good having a kid in the advet as kids are not supposed to handle the product and she was offering to help on the TV advert after they where pretty much done with the radio advert!

Sugar got it totally wrong, who's with me?..............

I largely agree but think she could assert herself more effectively and not whinge so much when out of earshot of the object of her frustration

Meeee - I'm with you!

Laura was the most level headed and best contributor to this task, but she and her views were continually rail-roaded by Alex, who himself only seemed to buy in to the Germ-o-nator idea the moment Stuart mentioned the catch-phrase "Asta la vista gravy" - up to that point he was dead against it!

I haven't liked Laura up to this task but I did think she out-performed most of the others this week. As for whingeing behind Alex's back it was only after she'd done her level best to his face, but at the end of the day there comes a point when they have to concede to the team leader's decision - but it can't be easy to take it without moaning about it afterwards, especially when they know they were right!

From what we saw, I didn't think she was whinging, she was putting forward good ideas that Alex didn't realise where good ideas and started going on about the war and then he turned down her help on other matters.

Others like Jo I think it is, moan much more, but its a no win situation. If you don't press hard where you disagree, the others will use that against you if you lose, but if you do press hard, your accused of moaning/undermining and its up to Sugar to work it out but for some reason he had it in for Laura and got it totally wrong on her.

Hey! Very good post and I totally agree with your points. I too wasn't that keen on Laura before but I think she's been treated wrong and bad since the selling task, since when Paloma tried to hog all the sales for herself and thought Laura was out of order wanting an equal amount of the sales if she had to give her own sales up and now in this task as well.

Hopefully Sugar realises that he got it wrong on her before the next task, if he doesn't and she gets fired, he will realise it afterwards like he does on a lot of the ones he sacks or ends up hiring.

At least Alex didn't bring her back and respect to him for that. I agreed with Alex's stance where he didn't want to go for dog eat dog in the boardroom and wanted to defend their product and just let Sugar decide who to sack without it becoming dog eat dog, but Sugar wasn't going to allow that to happen but it did happen in the celeb version about 2 comic relief ones ago. The one with Gerald Ratner was the PM and he defended himself and his team etc.

Doesn't really matter imo. Laura is one of the weakest and doesn't have the basic business acumen to be the apprentice.

Well, Sugar hardly ever selects the strongest candiadate, I think last year was the first time in Yasmina that he did go for the strongest candiadate and he normally likes to go for someone who hasn't got it all so he can mould them and on that, Laura should have a chance because she's not that bad but has to improve on assertiveness.

I'm with you!
we said the exact same thing here. I thought Lord Sugar was informed of all the ins & outs of the task he would have known about laura's input surely?

I'm begining to get the feeling that Sugar may have wanted to sack her instead of Alex and was annoyed that he couldn't do so and thats wrong of him imo.

er do you mean selling medical adverts for screens in hospital waiting rooms?



oh

Yes, i totally agree. It really bugged me last night. I never liked laura until this weeks show but half way through I was thinking omg, someone just listen to her.
I was really surprised that Lord Alan Sugar seemed to be so hard on her and that Karen didnt seem to defend her when she was there with them and saw what was going on. I was also surprised that she was The One That Got Away. Think they got it completely wrong.

This is the long and short of it.

Its a communication problem. She either flies off the handle: The battle of Old Compton Street, or backstabs, or angrily snipes: when Sandeesh was learning her pitch she either shouted at her or was incredibly negative.

Thing is, when viewed on camera is just looks bad. She looks like a negative trouble maker.

If she could just do as Eddiebaby says, she would come off a lot better. She's capable, probably a lot more than most of them, but she is shooting herself in the foot.

Lord Sugar likes passion, but not negativity and he's looking for someone who will fit in to his organisation. She really is doing herself no favours.

She had good ideas but no charm.
How d'you convince people? You can railroad them. Laura's not strong/loud/gobby enough.
You can persuade them by force of logic etc. That's slow-going though.

Or you can woo them.
She's young but maybe she has potential....Don't think she'll win though.

Laura had hardly any contribution to the final product - but that was not her fault. Alex gave her NOTHING to do, and when she attempted to contribute, it was thrown back in her face.

She pointed out the gaffe of having a child advertise the product, the awful design, phoned Alex and asked to help (which was rejected!) and took the time to create a pitch which was totally ignored.

Alex was a dire Project Manager.

At one point, I actually thought that he was purposely sidelining her so he could use her lack of contribution against her in the board room and get her fired. I was pleasantly surprised when he didn't bring her back into the boardroom.

The colour chosen for the bottle reminded me of some uber stong bleach which you have to use with a lot of care.

Alex listen to others too much, over thinks about what their saying and misses the point in the original suggestion/points. This way he doesn't pooh pooh bad ideas but doesn't notice when he has a good idea in front of him either!

Sounds like he's still unemployed as well?

Actually Laura's main issue was that she claimed to have assisted in the sale because she interjected while Paloma was selling, so she felt she should get a share. Utterly hypocritical, because she had objected strongly to Sandeesh and Paloma interjecting during her sale and was very insistent on getting the full credit for that sale herself, which the other two agreed with. Not to mention the way she made her objections known, standing in the shop doorway wailing about how "it's not fair!" Laura was 100% to blame on the matter of that srgument.

I thought her pretty useless on this task too, though some of this seemed to be down to Alex sidelining her (and also editing, which from what Alex said worked against her). In any case, Alex himself was the one who really deserved to go.

I agree in general, but Blitz is a terrible idea. I'm only 23 and even I associate that with war, death, and London being bombed

product names are hard

somerfield had a washing product called CYCLON, which I thought reminiscent of ZYKLON, the german nerve gas

vauxhall NOVA meant doesnt go in Spanish

rolls royce silver MIST was something rude in German.

this is why a lot of models are just numbers. can't offend anyone with a V2. oo-er!


I thought a short punchy name was the right way to go.
and a clear bottle. Blitx was fine. Chef's always blitz things in a food processor.

BLITZ / MAGIC / FRESH / etc etc.


Lord Sugar often gets it wrong. His business acumen is somewhat overrated imo

Thought she was judged a little harshly this week! Not the stronest candidate ever but no where near the worst. She needs to be a bit more assertive without tipping into whining!

No way! I had to sign up an account just to get this off my chest. I think, on pure business acumen alone, Laura is probably the worst candidate in the entire six series so far!

This task should really have been a whitewash in Alex's team's favour, what with them having not one but two self proclaimed marketing experts in Alex and Laura, and being up against a team led by an army sniper, consisting of two bankers, a property developer and a cleaning company owner (who was effectively sidelined by the army sniper anyway).

The way I saw it was that yet again, Laura got absolutely everything wrong in terms of business / marketing decisions. She criticised Germonator as a bad brand name (Lord Sugar said the brand name was good), she had big involvement in designing the container on the first day which is what eventually lost the task for them, she criticised Sandeesh's pitch which it was stated was the best part of their campaign. On top of that was the constant harping, moaning and wailing.

With the right campaign Blitz potentially could have beaten OctoKleen, but it's not just a case of putting a word out there and expecting that to be good enough, especially if you claim to be experienced at marketing. It doesn't look like she had any conviction in the idea because at the latter team brainstorm, when it was settled that they would go with Germonator, she did not mention it at all.

I suppose she is young, and she did a good job in front of the TV camera last week so she is not totally useless, but that's pretty much all she is any good for on what has been shown so far. Even Sophocles & Norule had better basic business acumen!

I think she's getting away with murder, tbh - she's very negative, I've never seen her smile and she's constantly whinging about one thing or another...

Not with Paul Callaghan and Mikey Sophocles being Apprentice Alumni she's not

How could I have forgotten about Paul Callaghan! Kristina had him down to a tee as an 'eejit'!

Paul made one massive terrible mistake in taking cheese to France, based on the belief that if it would sell, a nice profit would be made. He was an arrogant, smarmy character and he's probably in the top few most unpleasant as well as useless.

But with Laura, if she needs to make a decision, whether it's sales exclusivity (twice!), or any decision to do with marketing like those on this task, she has always made the wrong choice. Nobody in the history of the apprentice has made as many mistakes, and we're only half way through!

"Blitz" just means "lightning". It's certainly a term that gets bandied about to mean "quick" or "vigorous".

Alex was probably right not to take Laura into the boardroom, partly for reasons he stated on Yer Fiyad but also because she had enough ammunition from the task to take him out. If Lord Sugar didn't have some weird Sophocles-like toleration for Sandeesh (is she hypnotising him or something?) the boardroom line-up wouldn't have been at all controversial.

Sandeesh is better than Sophocles though.