THE Apprentice viewers were left cringing after contestant Akeem Bunda-Kamara broke “number one rule” on Thursday’s episode.
The teams were tasked with creating their own driverless Pod brand – they had to design, brand and pitch the idea to major corporate clients that were looking to lease driverless vehicles.
However, Akeem hit a bump in the road when he pitched his team’s environmentally focused Beepure Pod to some of the leading transport businesses including Network Rail and HS2.
Unfortunately, the strategy manager failed to grasp the importance of communication and turned his back on his audience as he presented to a room full of investors.
He kicked off the pitch by saying: “I introduce BeePure, which is our new taxi POD.”
He then showed off the POD’s features, but he immediately turned his back to the whole room as he faced the vehicle.
Akeem then disappeared from view completely as he entered the POD vehicle and sat down to demonstrate how comfy the seats were.
Completely hidden from the room, the clients were baffled by his presenting skills as they struggled to catch a glimpse of the team leader.
Despite Akeem’s rocky performance, team Infinity secured over £1million in sales, sending them safely through to next week.
Lord Sugar’s axe fell on project manager Sophie Wilding tonight after here party-focused Star Pod was criticised for its gaudy interior and dodgy logo, racking up just over £500,000 in sales from buyers.
Reflecting on what went wrong, Sophie exclusively told The Celeb Report: “For me, I think a three-year-old could have come up with those colours, the logo and the name; like minimal amount of thought went into that, and I just felt the marketing team wanted to be spoon fed every single type of information.
“Watching the show back, the other team were really creative, they thought of so many ideas themselves, they didn’t need every single little bit of information to be told to them by Akeem, and I felt I had to do that with my team.”
Marketing duties for Sophie’s team were handled by Akshay Tharar and Kathryn Louise Burn.
Potential buyers were put off by its logo, which Karren Brady described as an “exploding toaster”.
There were tense discussions in the losers’ cafe ahead of a return to the boardroom, which Sophie found uncomfortable.
She said: “Everyone’s scrambling to survive, so to speak. People are willing to just say what they need to say and throw people under the bus.
“It’s difficult. It’s a process you go through, but ultimately for me I just thought I needed opinions and I needed responses that were justified with actual examples when I went in the boardroom.
“For me, I hated that part, I hated listening to people talk about other people or being two-faced and the tension and negativity that had after. I never put myself in that situation. I was completely myself.”
