Marketing For Power Packed Business Growth

This first part of a Red Nose edition of my favourite business show "The Apprentice" with Sir Alan Sugar was a lot of fun.

For those who aren't UK residents Red Nose day was started when a group of comics got together and decided to do some funny things to raise money for charities. Rather like Live Aid and was dubbed Comic Relief. And Red Nose day is where everyone gets to wear Red Noses and the BBC provides the stage for comics and celebs to urge people to give money by entertaining them.

It's now snowballed into a big event which has a number of other events feeding money into it. The Apprentice is one of those.

Almost immediately we were shown poor Rupert Everett, Hollywood movie star. He felt completely unable to function with a camera in his face and he just didn't turn up for the task. So Sir Alan drafted in Tim, a previous Apprentice winner, to bolster up the men's team.

The team's task was for each to run an event with 4 fair rides or shows in each one. The fair was to be by ticket and the team who got the most for Comic Relief wins.

The boys team consisting of Alasdair Campbell, Piers Morgan, Ross Kemp, Rupert Everett and Danny Baker was led by either by Piers Morgan or spin doctor Alasdair Campbell. I didn't catch the moment the team leader was decided. And during the task it certainly wasn't clear who led.

And Morgan never seemed to neglect an opportunity to mention the cash for honours scandal or anything else that could niggle Campbell.

That said the boys won the initial skirmish when they negotiated the fair ground items they wanted for their fair. The girls got their main one (the dodgems) but were left with other rides that seemed uninviting.

They also seemed to have a little more creativity at the event - they got a society photographer to take photos of people, they also had Campbell in the stocks so people could pay to pelt him with water filled sponges. So top marks for creativity.

The girls team was made up of Cheryl Cole, Jo Brand, Maureen Lipman, Trinny Woodall and Karren Brady and Brady was universally nominated as the team leader. It seemed the best course as out of all of them she had experience running events, after all she is the MD of Birmingham City.

The girls had the edge over the boys because they started off very quickly selling tickets for as high a price as they could. My opinion of fashion guru Trinny Woodall soared when she went round to one of her wealthy friends and almost without prompting the friend donated £150,000 to Comic Relief. Nice one Trinny. Trinny also got another friend (a famous chef) to send round one of his chef's to size up and buy the food they needed for their event.

The girls event lacked a little sparkle as only the dodgems were being used. But they managed to get their celebs to stump up over £500,000 for attending, going on the rides and eating the food they'd prepared.

When the teams returned to the boardroom the girls has thrashed the boys. The boys having made just over £200,000 lost the task and tomorrow they face Sir Alan to find out who gets fired.

In my opinion Alasdair Campbell should be fired as he didn't appear to have any real plan once they had the fairground rides. Hmm. Does that sound familiar!? He seemed to let Piers Morgan do what he liked and they started selling tickets too late. Anyway tune into tomorrow and we'll see...