Great jingles are memorable - they penetrate your psyche like a nailgun through the knackers and won't shift until you buy the product, several spares in case you're mugged on the way home and a few more as presents for people you don't even like. Sadly, bad jingles can also get trapped in a cranium with space to rent, as anyone who saw The Apprentice last week (BBC1, Wednesdays) can testify.
Food was again the theme as the contest to find Britain's most obnoxious career-obsessed twerp entered week five. Surallan leered massively from an Imax screen to deliver the brief, his usual charming mix of one part Stalin to three parts Sid James.
The task - devising a campaign for a kids' breakfast cereal featuring "an original cartoon character" - was itself virtually impossible given that everything from robot crustaceans to a talking pancreas have been slapped on a cereal box and merchandised to kingdom come.
Sadly, the 'cereal killer' concept mooted by Geordie ideas-man Phillip was shot down by horrified team-mates, depriving consumers of the cannibal-icious Jeffrey Dahmer-endorsed wheat bisks they surely deserve. While the 'sex sells' angle was also mystifyingly ruled out, inspiration was at hand when Phillip sagely noted "kids love pants jokes" - although the mortified look on the faces of the pint-sized guinea pigs corralled into appearing in the advert told a different story.
The final nail in Pants-Man's coffin was a lime-green box no-one could possibly like, whatever hallucinogens their mother took during pregnancy - indicating the classic marketing faux pas of equating 'hungry schoolboy' with 'blind self-hating lunatic'.
"I'm okay with it, but not overly okay," was the telling contribution of team leader Kimberly.
More successful was piratical parrot Captain Squawk, whose Treasure Flakes will doubtless put the fear of God into Tony the Tiger, Captain Rik and the gay threesome on the Rice Krispies box.
Of course, the task's tragic futility was that neither cereal would get past the unblinking eye of the ASA, which for some reason objects to promotions linking delicious sugar-coated E-numbers with grown men in their underwear.
As entertainment, it was okay. But not overly okay.
Food was again the theme as the contest to find Britain's most obnoxious career-obsessed twerp entered week five. Surallan leered massively from an Imax screen to deliver the brief, his usual charming mix of one part Stalin to three parts Sid James.
The task - devising a campaign for a kids' breakfast cereal featuring "an original cartoon character" - was itself virtually impossible given that everything from robot crustaceans to a talking pancreas have been slapped on a cereal box and merchandised to kingdom come.
Sadly, the 'cereal killer' concept mooted by Geordie ideas-man Phillip was shot down by horrified team-mates, depriving consumers of the cannibal-icious Jeffrey Dahmer-endorsed wheat bisks they surely deserve. While the 'sex sells' angle was also mystifyingly ruled out, inspiration was at hand when Phillip sagely noted "kids love pants jokes" - although the mortified look on the faces of the pint-sized guinea pigs corralled into appearing in the advert told a different story.
The final nail in Pants-Man's coffin was a lime-green box no-one could possibly like, whatever hallucinogens their mother took during pregnancy - indicating the classic marketing faux pas of equating 'hungry schoolboy' with 'blind self-hating lunatic'.
"I'm okay with it, but not overly okay," was the telling contribution of team leader Kimberly.
More successful was piratical parrot Captain Squawk, whose Treasure Flakes will doubtless put the fear of God into Tony the Tiger, Captain Rik and the gay threesome on the Rice Krispies box.
Of course, the task's tragic futility was that neither cereal would get past the unblinking eye of the ASA, which for some reason objects to promotions linking delicious sugar-coated E-numbers with grown men in their underwear.
As entertainment, it was okay. But not overly okay.
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