Week 9 of The Apprentice, the candidates meet up at the National Theatre on the south bank to await Sir Alan’s instructions.

Alex is project manager of Alpha this week, with Raef team leader for Renascence, denying Michael the chance to lead this week after requesting to last week. The task this week is to develop and promote a brand to sell tissues. As part of this, teams are required to shoot a TV advert.

Armed with a blank tissue box, teams began brain storming their ideas. Alex comes up with the name of Atishu for Alpha’s brand, whilst Raef and Michael’s thoughts for Renascence lead them to a local school for the advert shoot, staring Sian Lloyd to play the loving mother. Nick questions why Sian Lloyd was chosen for the shoot as she isn’t married and doesn’t have any children “she’s known as a weather girl”!

Meantime, the rest of the team work on the print promotion material. Claire airs her dislike at Raef and Michael, feeling they are just playing at being directors. Alpha also decides to go for a family orientated theme, featuring an ill child. Alex directs the shoot with Lucinda overseeing the editing process.

In the edit suites, both teams review and cut their footage together to form the final advert. Raef and Michael struggle to reduce their advert to the required length of 30 seconds. As a result, they are nearly reduced to removing all of the Sian Lloyd footage but agree that some needs to reside for the sake of hiring the celebrity.

With the adverts cut and other marketing material sorted, the teams pitch their brands to a group of advertising experts, with a surprise guest, Sir Alan! Claire was the first to pitch, and without any notes, conveyed the product well. Lee, complete with notes, was fumbling however and not giving a professional image.

In the boardroom, it was time for each team to compare notes. Renascence was first to air with their polished advert, with Alpha looking ashamed by the end of it. Alpha’s advert was then shown and by the end Renascence was struggling not to laugh. However, Sir Alan felt that the cinematic masterpiece created by Renascence didn’t actually convey the product properly and so were required to stay in the boardroom. For Alpha it was off to Harvey Nichols to buy goodies on Sir Alan.
Sir Alan knows what to expect, especially from Claire with her “fifty rounds of bull sh*t in her AK47”. Michael tries to claim all the good bits of the advert came from him by which point Raef questions how can it all be from you. However, Sir Alan felt as team leader this week, it was all on Raef. Raef you’re Fired!

So once again Michael has miraculously escaped a firing from Sir Alan! Having thought Raef would make in it to the final, did Sir Alan make the right decision this week? Head over to the forum now to leave your comments >>