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Are the tasks a set up?


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Old 11-05-2011, 23:03
Krule
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It seems to me that in almost every task Lord Sugar/the producers leave themselves some leeway to influence the outcome, in order to have some control over who they bring back to the boardroom.

In this task, we saw a boys team with a far superior APP, who worked better as a team, made significantly better presentations overall (both to the clients and to the large audience); and a girls team where the majortiy disliked their APP, admitted their presentations were poor and were conviced they lost. Consequently, the boys won 2 out of the 3 pitches, and clearly did much better with the live audience.

Yet the key determinant here was not any of the above, or the overall performance, but rather the fact that one of the clients had an astronomically larger global exposure, and the winning team was undoubtedly going to be whoever won that pitch.The initial sales to midday figures proved that the boys had done bettter generally, and the overnight figures was purely down to the global exposure of those 3 clients (or rather, that one big client). I know some would argue that the boys APP was not 'global', but i still think it was much better, as did most of the candidates, the large audience and 2 out of the 3 'expert' clients! Since when did APP distributers care about accents in APPs being offensive, there are far far more offensive APPs out there making millions.

There lies my point - there's always some kind of control mechanism that the show's producers retain to manipulate the results - they could have easily influenced the big client's decision. Usually i would have expected this to happen at a later stage in the show, but maybe not.

Anyone else agree?
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:08
Leatherface!!!
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I kinda woundered how the boys lost. it must of been that the girls website that they got was the biggest out of the three. Cant see how else they would of won, I liked the boys ones much more than the girls.

The boys one was atleast creative and new

When the boys lost I did think the producers changed it lol

I just cant see that in 4 hours they had 3000 compared to 1000 with girls, then suddenly in the other 20 hours they only had 900, compared to 9000 with the girls
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:09
iamsofired
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Nope the rules were there at the start and the girls sold the most apps. Dont see how that can be a set up.
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:12
madlh100
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To be honest, both Apps were beyond awful.
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:13
floopy123
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I think the girls won the app task because their app appealed to the teenager market, more so than the boy's app. The key to the success was targeting the 16 - 24 age group and the girls' app - with its silly sounds - was very youth-orientated.
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:13
Agent Krycek
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I kinda woundered how the boys lost. it must of been that the girls website that they got was the biggest out of the three. Cant see how else they would of won, I liked the boys ones much more than the girls.

The boys one was atleast creative and new

When the boys lost I did think the producers changed it lol

I just cant see that in 4 hours they had 3000 compared to 1000 with girls, then suddenly in the other 20 hours they only had 900, compared to 9000 with the girls
The girls app was global, the boys wasn't and that's why they lost
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:17
Jimmy_McNulty
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Nobody outside of the UK (or in it in fact) cares about an app about British accents.

That's why they lost. When they was at that expo- majority British audience.

I thought both apps were terrible, but the girls app was 1) universally acceptable and 2) not as offensive as the boy's app.
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:18
-Sid-
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I thought it was a very fundamental error by the boys. Why were they getting so carried away with the idea when it was clear that the market for it was tiny?
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:19
Ænima
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I think the girls won the app task because their app appealed to the teenager market, more so than the boy's app. The key to the success was targeting the 16 - 24 age group and the girls' app - with its silly sounds - was very youth-orientated.
Their app was even worse than the boys. Annoying noises? Honestly? Those 10,000+ people really must be rather dim.

Even if you got it on someone elses phone, it would be a crap practical joke, but you download it to your phone

Loved how the girls pitch was mega serious too, like it was the next big thing and not in fact just some stupid, pointless app for braindead people who like to annoy themselves
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:22
brangdon
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In this task, we saw a boys team with a far superior APP,
I thought the boys app was the worst of the two. I can't imagine wanting it, where-as annoying noises is the sort of thing that does do well. There are scores of fart apps, for example.

That goes double when you remember it's a global market. Americans aren't going to be interested in UK accents. As soon as they came up with the idea, I thought it was a loser.

The web site that rejected the boys app was right: it was a bit politically incorrect to stereotype like that, so they lost that pitch on merit. Plus the site may have been thinking of its global audience.

Yet the key determinant here was not any of the above, or the overall performance, but rather the fact that one of the clients had an astronomically larger global exposure, and the winning team was undoubtedly going to be whoever won that pitch.
From what Lord Sugar says, winning the major web site wasn't that significant. The girls needed some exposure to have a chance, but they always had the better app for the global market.

The initial sales to midday figures proved that the boys had done bettter generally,
The initial sales were UK-only. America would have been asleep. (Both apps seemed to be English-speaking.) The boys did well in the UK and poorly in America. The key was that America was the bigger market by far.

There lies my point - there's always some kind of control mechanism that the show's producers retain to manipulate the results - they could have easily influenced the big client's decision. Usually i would have expected this to happen at a later stage in the show, but maybe not.

Anyone else agree?
Not me. Why would they care which team wins?
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:22
floopy123
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The guy on the Fired show, from the Carphone Warehouse, said people use apps to waste time and teenagers like to waste time playing with pointless apps! Team Logic didn't consider the teen market aspect when coming up with their app.

Silly sounds is a bit immature, all kids laugh at funny noises, so that taps into the teen market. It may have been a fluke the girls won but their app hit the right group of people.
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:31
Krule
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Having read some of the replies I think i've changed my mind (don't worry, Jim had nothing to do with it!)

When i think about it with an open mind, America is the biggest mobile APP market in the world, and they'd care far less about an APP with only about 6 different types of British accents than they would about funny/annoying noises. I can liken it to how interested i would be in different types of American accents - i see it all as one accent anyway.

So i think on balance it makes sense that the girls one, their APP truly was more glabal than the boys.

It's a shame, cos I think the boys did do much better as a team and in their presentations.

I stand by what i said in that in the later episodes, i think it makes sense that the producers would want to have some control over the outcome, otherwise you can get some idiot who's always luckily in the winning team and makes it to the interview stage which would undermine the whole value of the show
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:33
Agent Krycek
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Having read some of the replies I think i've changed my mind (don't worry, Jim had nothing to do with it!)

When i think about it with an open mind, America is the biggest mobile APP market in the world, and they'd care far less about an APP with only about 6 different types of British accents than they would about funny/annoying noises. I can liken it to how interested i would be in different types of American accents - i see it all as one accent anyway.

So i think on balance it makes sense that the girls one, their APP truly was more glabal than the boys.

It's a shame, cos I think the boys did do much better as a team and in their presentations.

I stand by what i said in that in the later episodes, i think it makes sense that the producers would want to have some control over the outcome, otherwise you can get some idiot who's always luckily in the winning team and makes it to the interview stage which would undermine the whole value of the show
Are you sure, his Jedi powers are great
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:38
missfrankiecat
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10k downloads is actually a tiny figure for a global app, so people are right to say neither team's effort was good. But the task was won on number downloads and so obviously limiting your market to the UK was not great. I do think if the girls hadn't got exposure on any of the websites ( and the fact that they did was possibly down to the chance of one of the guys thinking their rather puerile offering was racist! ) the boys would still have won.
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:39
brangdon
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I stand by what i said in that in the later episodes, i think it makes sense that the producers would want to have some control over the outcome, otherwise you can get some idiot who's always luckily in the winning team and makes it to the interview stage which would undermine the whole value of the show
If that happens, Lord Sugar can mix up the teams until the idiot is exposed. Sometimes you can sort-of see him putting an idiot on each team so he always has someone to fire. If that fails, he can fire the idiot summarily at the interview round. If the idiot somehow makes it to the final, then Lord Sugar decides the winner of that arbitrarily anyway. The idiot can't win.
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:39
Shrike
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The final is always completely contrived to be shown whichever way Suralun wants - as he (previously anyway) makes his actual decision months after filming. I'd say any of the earlier rounds where 'experts' report back and Sid makes up his own mind would also allow him to weed out those he definitly doesn't want - thats why theres always an advertising type task where there are no concrete figures to get in the way
But tonight was simply a case of the girls, by luck or judgement, hitting the global youth market which was where the sales were.
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:49
SoapyJo
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To be fair, both apps were crap, but the boys app was ridiculous and wouldn't appeal globally.
I knew the boys would lose just from the preview of the apps in the first You're Fired episode.
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:49
Dix
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The guy on the Fired show, from the Carphone Warehouse, said people use apps to waste time and teenagers like to waste time playing with pointless apps! Team Logic didn't consider the teen market aspect when coming up with their app.

Silly sounds is a bit immature, all kids laugh at funny noises, so that taps into the teen market. It may have been a fluke the girls won but their app hit the right group of people.


But it wouldn't need a lot of people to hit a website, a few people could keep hitting to up the score. Or the girls' app was set up to be hit, and there's nothing to say it wasn't worked that way. The girls were very surprised they had so many hits, and it wouldn't surprise me if someone made sure they won.


Neither of the APPs were that brilliant.
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:55
floopy123
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To be fair, both apps were crap, but the boys app was ridiculous and wouldn't appeal globally.
I knew the boys would lose just from the preview of the apps in the first You're Fired episode.
To be fair to both teams, they were given a day to come up with an app and market it. I'm guessing in the real world, companies take much longer to develop an app, do extensive market research. The Apprentice cuts out a lot of that, we see a rushed version of the process.
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:57
Dix
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The final is always completely contrived to be shown whichever way Suralun wants - as he (previously anyway) makes his actual decision months after filming. I'd say any of the earlier rounds where 'experts' report back and Sid makes up his own mind would also allow him to weed out those he definitly doesn't want - thats why theres always an advertising type task where there are no concrete figures to get in the way
But tonight was simply a case of the girls, by luck or judgement, hitting the global youth market which was where the sales were.
Except there weren't any sales as such, as the APPs were free.
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Old 11-05-2011, 23:58
Luxvia
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I honestly cannot get my head around ten thousand or so people downloading such a crappy app. Seems so unreal.
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Old 12-05-2011, 00:02
Shrike
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Except there weren't any sales as such, as the APPs were free.
True, but it was a measurable quantity not just Suralun saying 'from the feed back I got your app was crap'
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Old 12-05-2011, 00:06
floopy123
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"I honestly cannot get my head around ten thousand or so people downloading such a crappy app. Seems so unreal."
There was an app challenge on Channel 5's The Gadget Show. The winning app was a motorcycle game. Suzi Perry, one of the presenters of the show, won the task. She loves bike racing and came up with the idea. She got a large number of downloads, I think it was in the thousands.
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Old 12-05-2011, 00:14
Dix
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True, but it was a measurable quantity not just Suralun saying 'from the feed back I got your app was crap'
I think he probably knows it was, but there are times when one doesn't say that in his world, as he couldn't afford to. Had the APP been a good one I would have hit it a million times, or get someone to help me do it. That's the thing with the Net, 10, 000 people can hit without anyone knowing who they are.
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Old 12-05-2011, 00:19
Dix
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If that happens, Lord Sugar can mix up the teams until the idiot is exposed. Sometimes you can sort-of see him putting an idiot on each team so he always has someone to fire. If that fails, he can fire the idiot summarily at the interview round. If the idiot somehow makes it to the final, then Lord Sugar decides the winner of that arbitrarily anyway. The idiot can't win.
Like Michael, for instance, who was kept in until LS thought it was time he went.

Last edited by Dix : 12-05-2011 at 00:21. Reason: wrong word...he for in
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