Tissues the issue for sugar's apprentice

By Kay Harrison on May 22, 2008 9:00 AM |

Tagged with:

Apprentice,
Ogilvy

CANARY WHARF’S iconic towers regularly set the scene on the show, despite the fact Sir Alan Sugar is based in Brentwood.

But this week The Apprentice truly arrived on the estate, when the two teams went head-to-head in the creative task inside Ogilvy’s Cabot Square offices.

Fans of the BBC show will have watched the surprise result last night after the hopefuls spent two days at the top marketing agency, designing 30-second adverts and posters for a brand of tissues.

And the results were enough to make you reach for a box.

Ogilvy spokesman Kevin Whitlock said: “For sheer entertainment this was the one to watch.
“It’s weird – you aren’t allowed to intervene, so if someone comes up with a really bad idea, the biggest load of rubbish you’ve ever heard, you’re not allowed to say anything. You just had to let them get on with it.”

Ogilvy, renowned for such striking ad campaigns as Dove, American Express and Cancer Research, organised an Apprentice party in their company bar to watch the show, which was shot back in October.

Kevin said: “There was a real buzz around the agency when it was being filmed and we’ve had a big build up over the last few weeks waiting to see it. It was all super cloak and dagger, but it was great fun.

“The teams had to put their pitch to our chairman Gary Leih and vice-chairman Vicky Bullen. They then voted on what was the best, or really I should say the least worst. They were both stinkers, appallingly bad. But I suppose they only had a couple of days to do it. But some of them thought they were making Dr Zhivago, not an advert.

“They weren’t expecting Sir Alan Sugar to be there for the pitch either. We had to smuggle him up in the goods lift so no one would see him.”

And you may also have been unwittingly caught up in the next episode of The Apprentice, which was also shot around the estate last autumn.

Episode 10 will see the remaining contenders fight to attract passers-by to sign up to a luxury car business – and the battlefield was Canary Wharf Tube station.