The Apprentice: the writing was on the wall for Laura

This week we saw the teams pitted against each other in the traditional ‘art task’…

I hated this task when I was on the show a few years ago. I excelled in the 10 other tasks, to great feedback from Lord Sugar, yet I just couldn’t get my head around this one for some reason.

First challenge

The first challenge is to get the right artist. You want to end up with something for everyone, a mix of prices to suit everyone, as you can’t control the calibre of the crowd you get on the night.

Tom’s knowledge of the urban art scene was a lucky break, but unfortunately didn’t carry him to a victory. It’s also very easy to get swayed by what you like, and to not cater to the target audience. Candidates often throw out the “well I can’t sell it if I don’t believe in it myself” line. This attitude is all well and good if you’re thinking of a long term career, but when it’s a one night task, just get on with it!

Second challenge

The second challenge is to get the right type of people through the door. Most art galleries and artists have a database of buyers which they tap into. They spend a lot of time making sure the right people are on this list and also building those all important relationships.

However when you only have one day to organise it all, it’s quite difficult to do any real marketing. So you often end up with art-tourists… people who come for the free champagne and nibbles who have no intention of buying. One of the mistakes we made when we did this task is promoting the event on the streets, which wasn’t very effective as we ended up with a lot of art students.

Third challenge

The third challenge is to use the right sales approach. When I did the task, I ended up selling nothing, it was so embarrassing and disappointing. Selling art is a very difficult thing to do as you have to take a ‘softly softly’ approach while still pushing to close the deal. From my experience, people who throw the book out and just rely on their personality and charisma tend to do well, as demonstrated by Adam this week.

Overall I thought Tom did a good job, and Laura, who should have gone a few weeks ago, finally met her end. She didn’t sell as well as the others and there wasn’t much value add-on from her in the task. Essentially she wasn’t going to win, so she was bound to go sooner or later.

Did Laura deserve to go? And what did you think of the art on the show? Would you buy any of it? Let us know below.