DOG EAT DOG…BARKING IN THE BOARDROOM

Fiona Scott
4 min readMar 9, 2023
WOULD THE CANDIDATES COOK UP A DELICIOUS DOG DINNER — OR NOT?

Week Ten of the UK’s BBC tv series The Apprentice landed with the six remaining candidates being taken to Battersea Cats & Dogs Home and tasked with creating a new dog food complete with branding — ready to pitch to two potential buyers the next day.

Now with two teams of three, the first task was to choose a project manager. Victoria and Marnie went head to head — Victoria because she’s got a dog and Marnie, well, because she’s Marnie and always thinks she knows best. Rochelle backed Victoria and also happily accepted the job of crafting a gourmet dog dish. It turned out Rochelle is quite the cook and has been feeding the other candidates the last few weeks. Her vision was to create a dog food fit for humans.

On the other team, Megan took the lead and, also opted to put herself in the kitchen where she was weighing up which insects to include in her dog dish. While Rochelle went for lamb tagine, Megan went overboard on the potatoes and came up with a kind of beige mush, which no one wanted to put anywhere near their mouth.

For both teams, the marketing and branding went astray. Megan’s team struggled with the vague brief — mention the insects but not too much, mention sustainability but not too much about insects, focus on health and nutrition. With a vague brief, and the constant bickering between Dani and Simba, the brand…

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Fiona Scott

Fiona has been a UK journalist for more than 30 years as well as being a freelance tv producer director. She’s also had her own media consultancy since 2008.