1. Advertisers, after years, still take us, the consumers, as dumbass bints who would be willing to spend anything, even if it has a very dumb, cheap, tacky advertising campaign that comes with it. I find it very patronising, and it just shows that advertisers also don't want to take risks and just want to sit on the fence.

2. Sir Alan Sugar is a narrow-minded man who has cheap and very simple taste. "Oh, it didn't say the name tissue innit!". Silly! Nowadays, there are more and more adverts for products that are not in-your-face obvious yet still appeal to lots of people, and in facts, might actual be more interested in the product. Look at Cadburys' new campaign. It doesn't really say anything specific about the product but it is generating lots of interest and is likely generate more profits for it.

3. This show has become so try-hard to shock the audience to the point of booting off talented people, and keeping the nasty vulgar dumb people left to fight for the job. It's become so obvious that I wasn't surprised at all that Raef was fired tonight.

The Spoken Word Was His Toold - RIP Raef

No, I have to disagree. What is the point of a client spending several £100K on a TV ad campaign if we, the audience, are left unable to discern the name of the product being advertised.

Worse, anyone who has followed the Apprentice knows that

a) This is Sir Alan's viewpoint.
b) That he is going to be the ultimate judge in the game.

To miss these points is another indication of Raef's incompetence so he well deserved to go.

When you have a new product launch you have to make sure people know what it is and what it's called. Cadbury's have been advertising their chocolate as containing 'a glass and a half of milk' for decades now and are a well known enough brand for everybody know exactly what is being advertised just by having it prefaced with 'A glass and a half production' at the start. You couldn't have done that with a new brand of chocolate.

I disagree, what about the latest Cadbury's ad to the tune of Queen... What have all the airports trucks got to do with cadbury's chocolate?

What about Guinness ads? I have never understood any of them

Some of the car ads (cannot think of one off the top of my head right now) but some of them you have no idea they are advertising a car.

By the way I am absolutely gutted Raef has gone. It most definitely should have been the little slimeball Michael.

Yes, but Cadburys and Guiness are very well established brands. Makes all the difference. Based on Raef's ad I'd as likely go out and buy a box of Kleenex. Also, It's not whether we can tell that the ad is about tissues, it's about the fact that we don't see the product name anywhere from start to finish. Just one second of footage with a decent product shot would have made all the difference. For taste, why not just a full screen product shot with a strapline at the end of the sequence???

You're missing the point, well established brands are not starting from scratch with new ad campaigns, and they can therefore afford to use artistic licence e.g the cadbury gorilla ad. The whole point of this task was to launch a new brand, and though Alex's team ad and brand packaging was tacky, he acheived a main part of the brief i.e. we knew what he was selling, and the benefits of it (anti bacterial).

Or the Phil Collins hit `In the air tonight`.

OMG just looked on you-tube for it - 2,474,676 hits

I didn't have a problem with the losing team's advert. From personal experience, I find adverts that are more elusive stay in my mind more. They are more interesting, more captivating.

I just didn't get where Raef's team were coming from with the brand "I Luv Tissues."

I don't understand why people criticise the Apprentice ads for quality - they're always going to be crap, given the time and resources available. Alex's team did the right thing - go for the product and message - make it look good if you can (they couldn't), but don't worry about the look beyond a certain point.

They were trying to be 'cool' and latch on to a i heart new york theme, but tissues are not really something to be loved, they are a neccessity, esp if you have hay fever like me at the mo!

Here here

Sir Alan just didn't like Raef because he was posh. All I learnt was that Alan Sugar is, well and truly, an inverted snob.

Very true. At the end of the day the none of the candidates were likely to be experienced in movie direction; in real business you would go to an advertising agency!

Raef's team lost due to a lack of common sense; artistic talent was only ever going to enter into it if both sides had got the basics right.

To be fair, Raef's advert was nice and all, but in the end that's all it was. It'd make you smile, but you wouldn't think "those 'I love my tissues' are worth buying" after seeing it. It's a nice message, but a forgettable advert, it doesn't sell anything. If you saw a box in Tesco's it wouldn't hit you as hard as the other one, because at least in that one they mentioned the 'anti bacteria' thing, whereas Raef's was just "aww, kids". There was nothing about those tissues that made them special.

I have no idea why Michael is being saved every week though.

This show, and more importantly this task, has been on TV for years now and the candidates should know by now that the "arty farty" adverts never win.

Raef dug his own grave when he started going on about wearing a cravate and deserved to go.

Agreed, this show is on it's 4th season now and I assume that those that apply have watched enough of it to realise what works and what doesn't. Last year on the trainer ad campaign one team made exactly the same mistake and didn't highlight what the product was, if I could remember this basic error then why couldn't these 'great' business minds?

Alex and his team's advert was tacky but it made its point very effectively. There were close-ups of the box of tissues and the actors repeatedly mentioned the name of the product and the benefit of using it. The close-up at the end was also very effective.

Where where?













(I think you mean "hear hear"!)

I have to say the gorilla ad...never got me..

I mean I LOVED the ad....but i never actually remembered what it was advertising until the end...(maybe its beacuse im from ireland and it didnt show the ad that much..)and i was like oh yeah that


But getting back to Raef getting Fired ...total mistake imho...

But the OH was watching tonight ..(he tends to dip in andout of it as im always glued to it )

And he said WHICH I AGREE...is that " he will make more out of his time on the apprentice that ANY of the ones that are left even the one that is Hired."

And that is comming from someone that is not a appretice watcher..

Just Two cents ( i happen to agree..!)

I'm going to have to disagree, Raif's advert was quite good BUT it did not emphasize the product. By the end of the advert I was into the story too much to care about the tissues. We have to remember that this is a new product, people don't know about it. If this was an advert for a well known brand it could have worked because the audience would be aware of the brand and the product and would not need so much visualisation of the product.

Yes, Sir Alan is a man of simple taste which means that Raif should have grasped that and kept that in mind while making the advert. He completely lost it and the fact that he worked with Michael was the final nail in the coffin, had he worked with Clair things would have been very different.

While I do agree that Raif does have some talent (just look at the way he maintains he's hair) he is no apprentice. He and Sir Alan would not be able to work together, at the end of the day Sir Alan is searching for an apprentice and not a reality star for the BBC. I do think Michael should have been out long ago but he will be out soon enough.

Cheap, tacky, in your face adverts are used a lot and are very effective. Sheila's Wheels, 118 118, the Frosties advert with that irritating kid. They know they have to heavily promote the product in the advert which basicaally forces you to remember the name of the product no matter how bad the advert is.

Forget all the crap posted above – Read Norm Chomsky.

My advert would have been my son falling at sports day, I throw a big box of tissues at him. Not because he was crying, but to wipe up his bleeding knee with the anti bac stuff.
Then I would have kept a tissue because I would be crying with laughter the way he fell over. Would that have been a winner?

I can see people jamming the phone lines to the NSPCC as we speak!