Well see because the only time where all 3 of us were online was late at night during the first day, so there wasn't a decision made that night. It was still discussions that carried over to the next day, which I believed was an inefficient use of our time.

We initially started with a brainstorm. When it was just Iain and I, I put a list together of artists we could potentially use. He seemed particularly keen about a few of the artists I had chosen so I shortlisted about 4 - Hurts, Bastille, Marina and Ellie Goulding. Then I put them to George and I made a list of pros and cons. He seemed particularly keen on Marina but looking at the list of pros and cons I thought Hurts would be the best really mainly because of their massive European appeal with their awards and tours, their live vocals and distinct synth pop style, and the fact that they are already established there. George said I had convinced him about it from what I said so I chose them in the end.

However, we still managed to finish at 10:30 last night, meaning we didn't have I rush today - we handled the time well. If rather spend the time finding a great artist, than have a mediocre one with even more spare time!

Marina was the one I was leaning towards just because she's the only one on that list that I know anything about. I listen to her music, and I know that it is extremely popular at the moment, so I could really imagine Marina doing it. However, Roxie was clearly more informed than I was about the other artists, so when she made her case for Hurts I was more than happy to support it. And in the end Marina was involved anyway, because she's our support act on concert nights.

I just think we could've done more, and I kept telling you, and so did Naruto, about whether there's anything else you'd like for us to do. I just felt you settled for the minimum and just wanted to just do the requirements.

Moving on to the concert part of the task, both teams did this in different ways which was interesting.

Inspired, I thought your concert was on the whole very good and clearly a lot of thought had gone into it. I did think perhaps you overdid it a little in some areas, for example I'm not entirely sure if there was a necessity for a support artist? I know they have one in pretty much every concert but the idea of this one was moreso promoting Hurts for the purpose of Eurovision and I'm not sure a support act was really needed for that - especially as Marina is the type of act who would be popular with Eurovision fans and may overshadow Hurts. What are your views regarding this?

As for Aptitude, obviously you went about it very differently with having Natalia do the concert as part of a supporting act for another artist instead of doing her own concert. Whilst I can see the logic in this, do you think there's a chance that it would not have been a very effective promotion for Eurovision considering most of the attendees would be there to see Katy and the majority of them might not even have any interest in Eurovision?

I couldn't plausibly think of anything to do! I did three seperate marketing campaigns! Do you think I would've done that if I wanted the minimum? We could've done more, but did you suggest it? Talk the talk, AND walk the walk. I asked if there's anything else we need to do! You should've said it then instead of not saying anything and having an issue now!

Yes Naruto and I expressed that we weren't 100% confident of whether Natalia should be an opening act for Katy Perry but in the end of the day, almost all major decisions will taken by our Project Manager and I did as he asked me.

I did consider this, but: I thought Natalias ticket sales compared to katy pale in comparison. If people liked her set (which I know they probably would have), they will support her afterwards, even just to say "I saw her live". It also allowed promo opportunities to be associated with Katy, as that speaks highly of an artist - to support a megastar!

I did express it last night when I told you, sure, I did the tour, it's great, what else can I do? As a leader, you are supposed to have a full vision of what you want us to do and you should utilize us to the best of our abilities. I have been the creative force behind my team in the last 5 tasks, because the Project Managers, specifically George and Roxie when I worked under their direction, gave me free reign to be creative. You worked on a check-list basis. You just wanted us to be done with everything they asked us for, but I never saw you filling to go beyond that. You weren't really decisive and you just kept changing your mind a lot.

There was some hesitance i believe, but not enough to completely change it as i think we felt that Katy Perry would draw more crowd than Natalia herself.

I did a lot of market research and sent around a questionnaire to at least 15 people on this forum asking a few questions, one of which was about what aspects of a concert they like and what aspects of a concert they do not like as the concert would play a crucial promotional role in our campaign so I wanted to make sure people left with a good experience. This was a way of coming up with good ways of making that happen. Other questions were how we could improve Hurts chances of doing well in Eurovsion, where we have gone wrong in Eurovision in previous years and how they are normally informed about Eurovision. And many people came up with great suggestions to each one which I just had to include in our pitch. It may have come across as 'overdone' but the pitch was still clear, succinct and full of points.

The overwhelming response was that people love the support acts that come with a concert as they really energize the atmosphere and hype the audience up for the main act. I felt a support act would be great therefore and Marina and the Diamonds is just the right type of energetic support act. She is also great live and has a good reputation within Europe. As to whether she would eclipse Hurts, I do not think so. They both have very individual styles and Hurts have more than enough of the concert so that people leave with a lasting impression of them rather than Marina. At the same time being a supporter of Hurts, any people who would end up liking Marina may also end up liking Hurts and support them on their Eurovision campaign which is the goal of the concert anyway.

I can see your point, I'm just not entirely sure it would have promoted her as an act for Eurovision much which was the point of that aspect of the task. I get what you're saying in terms of her not being big enough across Europe to do her own concert, but perhaps it might have been an idea to incorporate this promotion of the concert into the promotional parts of the pitch? I did give you the chance to make a poster to do exactly this.

On the topic of the poster, I thought it was well designed and aesthetically pleasing but it did seem minimalistic and didn't mention the concert at all, it did seem from the pitch that it was a poster to advertise her as the Eurovision representative rather than the concert, whereas I specifically said in the pitch it was a poster to advertise the concert. Was this a case of misinterpreting the pitch on your teams behalf?

We didn't have to do a separate poster for iTunes.
We didn't have to do public relations in three different campaigns.
Naruto didn't have to do the fashion aspect.

If you wanted to do anything else? Ask! Seriously. I can't be criticised now if you didn't voice your opinion Shadi! You're criticising me, but did you ask to do anything of this? Did you say "we should do more, I have an idea". No you didn't. So please, don't criticise someone for something you did as well!

Yes, I do believe this was my misinterpretation, for which I apologise. And in retrospect your suggestions would have possibly been a better idea.

I'd just like to add a point that Marina's style, whilst it is amazing and she is very popular, is sometimes possibly a bit too intellectual for people who don't know what she's all about to get it. This was something that came up in our team discussions. Take a song like Bubblegum Bitch, for example. It is a feminist statement (and a very witty and poignant one) about women who exude the attitude of 'sleep around with any guy and then break his heart' and a parody of the sort of music that encourages that, which there is a lot. If someone didn't know about Marina, it might well take them a while to realise that it isn't just another one of those cheesy pop songs, but something more substantial. In a contest such as Eurovision, you need something that will appeal to audiences immediately even if they may not have come across it before, and we felt that Hurts would do that more successfully than Marina and the Diamonds.

I understand your reasoning for doing it especially if the market research was in your favour, I do think there are potential issues with it but it did not detract too much from the overall quality of your concert.

Also as I asked Aptitude about their poster I'll ask you as well. I was interested to see what you came up with especially as there was an issue with a couple of you and the poster last time it came up as a requirement in a task. I think there was definitely an improvement on it this time, I did like the fact that the Eurovision logo had visual hierarchy as it really made clear what the point of the concert was, although I think it was a bit too busy and had too much going on in it and wouldn't bee too eyecatching for onlookers.

What was your idea as a team behind the poster? And who was responsible for creating it?

Listen, with the task that you gave me, I was 100% thorough and did everything I could possibly do. So did Naruto with what you gave him. But if you look at the other team, for example, they conducted a market research to enhance their pitch. I'm talking about these aspects that might not have been asked of us, but would have helped our product. As a project manager, I felt that you:

1) were a micromanager. For example, yes I did the tour, but you chose the artist, the setlist, the number of concerts etc. Yes Naruto did why we chose the song/artist, but it was ultimately our choice, not his. I just felt like you didn't give ownership of the task at hand to the people that were responsible for them. It was very cross-delegated where you'd task us to do one thing, when we didn't choose it. This is a huge flaw because you're supposed to give people ownership of their tasks and give them free reign.
2) shut down my ideas before I had the chance to complete them. I tried to come up with ideas for performances. And yes, if you didn't like my first one, I could've come up with another one, and another one, but right when I was starting to pitch my second one you were like, no, I like it how it is, let's focus on something else, when everything else was practically done.
3) You were VERY indecisive. I saw you change your mind a lot.
4) You were very slow. And kind of rushed things the second day because of indecisive your were during the first day concerning the artist.
5) You could've thought outside the box and found ways to enhance our product. It's your job as Project Manager. It was my job last task. It was Roxie's job this task. It was everyone's job when they were PM. And I just didn't feel like you did that. I'm not sayin

I appreciate what you're saying but I don't necessarily agree. I'll leave it there.

Yes I took up responsibility of it straight away really. I did ask George if he felt like he wanted to redeem himself but he did not feel comfortable doing it, so I did not want to force him or Iain to do something they are not happy with doing. As for my own design skills, I tried my best with it and tried all sorts of software. I agree it would look a bit more professional for the real thing with professional software but I think I coped fine with it in Publisher.

I did have an idea that the poster should identify the key areas of the concert which people would be looking at a concert poster for - specifically ticket price, concert locations, support acts, song line-up, the members of Hurts. Additionally that we should emphasise Hurts' unique selling points as 'award-winning', 'sold millions of records' and the fact that Kylie Minogue would be appearing in certain locations. I believe that only adds to the appeal of the concert and thus these would be important points to emphasise. As well as that I wanted particularly dramatic images of Marina and Kylie to go along with that 'dramatic' aspect of Hurts. Personally I believe all the pictures together do look quite aesthetically pleasing. As for the busy look, it identifies everything that needs to be on a concert poster. Most concert posters are quite busy looking anyway and they always have a list of concert locations, ticket prices, support acts and normally song choices, so I thought it looks quite appropriate in that way.

I'm not saying that you did a bad job as PM. I called you good in my evaluations. You were decent. And I'm sure you had improved from your first stint. And our product was good as well and I'm very proud of it and I hope we won. But, I just felt like I wasn't utilized. You asked me on day 1 if I were good with Marketing, and I said I have a decent background despite it not being my major, and you said okay good but never really gave me any tasks surrounding that. The thing is, we worked together for 2 days and I could come up with a dozen things that you could've done better. And if we lose, I feel it will ultimately be because of that. Not because we didn't have a good product, but because you didn't go above and beyond as you should if you were a PM and wanted to win a task when there are 6 very strong people left. I never once complained about being underutilized, and I could've just kept my mouth because I don't believe that anything fell on my shoulder because everything I did was decided by you. So it isn't me trying to like, hedge my bets. But I have come to this boardroom and have been honest every single time I was here. I like you, I really do, but I'm just stating my opinion.

I did see this in one of the evaluations and was a bit disappointed about it. Considering your issues with the poster last task, George, and the specific comments I made about wanting to see an improvement on it in the next task I was hoping you would have jumped at the task of being given the poster to do and being able to show signs of improvement and stepping outside of your comfort zone, especially when you were even asked to do it. What was your reason for not even having a go at doing the poster, George?

I'll just ask a couple of further questions for everybody before revealing the results. The last requirement of the task was the promotional plans, this was kind of the pinnacle of the task so how did you go about choosing what to do for this part?

Also, for the task as a whole where did you get your ideas from? Was there much prior knowledge brought or did this task require lots of research? Did you involve market research into any aspects of your task, and if so how did you go about doing that?

I understand now Shadi, sorry

Well, it was actually two tasks ago, but that's a moot point.

Maybe I could have redeemed myself with the poster, but it would be a massive gamble. Designing posters is not my strong point - I knew that on Task 4, which was why I was a little surprised that Zak delegated it to me, but I did my best with it and I failed, which caused a big issue with my campaign. If I'd put myself forward to do it this time, I could have redeemed that for myself, but only if I had managed to make a really good poster, and I didn't think that I would be able to do one better than someone like Roxie.

I felt that if I wanted to show you what I can do, it would be better to play to my strengths than to my weaknesses, as overall the intention is to win the task, and if I did the poster, failed and we lost because of it, that would put me in a very dangerous position. Lord Sugar has said to numerous candidates over the years, 'Will you stick to what you bloody know?' and that is what I did. Having said that, I appreciate that a big part of this process is about glory-hunting for oneself over and above helping the team, so possibly it would have done better for me to have gone down that route. I just felt that overall, I would be more impressive by focussing on my strengths. But I will take what you say on board, and if I am still here on the next task maybe I'll try to design a poster for that, if you particularly want to see me design a poster.