CorpComms Magazine

This week's The Apprentice teams were given a tricky task - create a blueprint for a new free magazine, offering high quality content with no cover charge, supported only by advertising. Apparently it's all the rage in the magazine world. How could that possibly work? I must ask CorpComms editor Helen to see if she has any ideas.

It was one of those episodes - there's usually at least one every series - where I imagine the entire viewing public will have stood up in shock at the choice of firee, shouting 'Oi Lord Sugar, No!!!' This time, failed team leader Irish Jim was responsible for the loss of the task from every possible respect.

Who got fired? Design engineer Glenn. He didn't particularly shine in the task, but mainly because the good Lord had 'never come across an engineer who could turn his hand to business'. So he was doomed from the start, in which case why was he there in the first place?

From a number of ideas that were clearly preselected by the production team, chief ladette Natasha, leading team Logic, opted for a lads mag, filled with partially clothed women. 'Lads mags, yeah, they're all about lads, yeh?' was her sophisticated analysis of what would be required. She clearly hadn't heard that sales in this sector had been plummeting in recent years. Even the focus group, a rugby club (a rugby club!) thought this a bit passé, They were looking for something more upmarket, perhaps with some 'how to do well in business' content as well. So essentially as Lord Sugar pointed out in the boardroom later, 'like the FT with a swimwear section'.

A pretty gruesome compromise then, yet Natasha led her team to victory not least because she did seem to break with Apprentice tradition and actually show some listening skills, taking on board the focus group feedback - even if it did lead to a cheesy cover shot with a model in her underwear covered only by a pinstriped jacket and (for some reason) a hard hat.

As for sinister Jim - where to start? Team Venture targeted affluent the over-60s market - not a bad idea, but hobbled by their choice of jokey title Hip Replacement. (Most of the team's other ideas were even worse - Coffin Dodger, anyone? My favourite was Zimmer.) By his choice of cover picture, style and typeface, Jim stripped out all the irony and fun, and we were left with something that looked more like a knitting pattern.

Jim's personal style was picked apart in the boardroom - particularly his habit of never leading from the front, always picking up ideas from elsewhere so he had someone else to blame if they went wrong. I'm all in favour of listening to the team, so you don't steamroller over some potentially good ideas (see last week). But Jim's boardroom game here was too nakedly obvious.

He was said by several to be a 'nice guy' but Glenn hit the nail on the head calling him a 'control freak', while Karren Brady picked up on his passive-aggressive tendencies - this is how he has managed to bully several weaker characters in previous episodes. Jim's 'no compromise' approach was his undoing when pitching Hip Replacement to one of the big media buying firms, who would decide how much advertising they were potentially willing to buy, based on the cover and contents section. He wouldn't negotiate on the rate card, and hence got nothing from the agency. Jim showed himself unable to read the situation, picking up none of the heavy hints that there was a deal to be done at a more sensible price - maybe he imagined he could bully them like he bullied everyone else. Lesson: don't go into a meeting only prepared to talk - be prepared to listen too.

Susan Ma - characterised by Jim as useless, a little mouse - finally learnt to roar in the boardroom, after yet again being proved right in her instincts (hating the Hip Replacement title) but too willing to be dissuaded by the rest of the team. At last, in the boardroom, she stood up for herself against Jim. I don't think Susan will win, but I do think she will go a long way in business, with or without Lord Sugar's £250,000. She's just too quiet for The Apprentice boardroom bearpit. The lesson here is that just because you don't flourish in one work environment, doesn't mean you won't in another - sometimes it's better to change places rather than change yourself.

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