[Former Member 1]

Well I’ve avoided commenting on this one quite deliberately. Up to now!
The ‘project’ was brought to my attention not by Barry’s original post, but by some of my students. As accidentally-viral campaigns go this is a honey. For it’s the absolute laughing stock of many of the colleges and universities in Scotland.

Last Wednesday I happened to be in conversation with a broadcast colleague from Wales. A link to “The Hirer” had been passed to her. Rumour (apparently) has it in certain quarters that “The Hirer” is no more than a viral for a forthcoming comedy-soap opera from BBC Scotland! I’m not sure I’ve managed to convince her otherwise! Even if and it’s a huge if, this isn’t meant to be some rather sad shoddy rip-off of “The Apprentice” that’s EXACTLY how it comes across.

For one if this were the world-class project it’s supposed to be a little more time should have been taken and money spent with regard to the presentation of the characters and making the video....

The judges... two ‘dodgy doorman’ types who could well do with seeing a decent tailor (given the position they’re assuming) or at least working out what size waist they need the next time they’re in Makro shopping for trousers .... And some bright-orange-burd who looks and sounds like she’s stepped straight out of a Billy Connolly sketch... Frankly, they look like a bunch of what we would back in the Red Road have called “plazzy gangstas”. If someone were trying to create a comic image of Scottish Business people; i.e. someone was trying to do Scotland down, they couldn’t have done a better job.

...And those AREN’T personal comments or attacks. Merely observations that, having chosen to use the medium of television (and BTW it DOES say “TV Channel on the link to the video) they simply haven’t done so competently; haven’t understood or engaged with the process. And like a tone-deaf “X-Factor” contestant probably don’t realise that the main value in their performance is comedy!

The video itself is appalling! SHOCKINGLY poor! From the shoddy apprentice-esque graphics and music, the bad timing, the pitifully-poor camerawork (duh! you’re supposed to level the tripod!) through to the clueless incompetent lighting it screams “cheap”, “nasty”” and “unoriginal”...Honestly; if one of my first-year students were to turn in work like this I’d chuck them off the course!

So really what do we have here?

Frankly it smacks of the sort of recruiting process beloved of companies like Kirby, Britannica, various caravan sites and timeshare companies. The aim of the game being to railroad as many gullible losers as possible through the door in the certain knowledge that some of them will be desperate and/or thick-skinned enough to knock out whatever snake oil it is they happen to be selling.... For a while at least.

McClumpha & Co got lucky.... And fair play to them for all that. But international tycoons? They may be attracting a lot of attention with this project but what sort of attention? Eastern Europeans? Students tuning in to take the mick? TV producers convinced that this is the latest fiendish plot from the BBC Scotland comedy unit?

You can fool some of the people all of the time. And the dayglo-orange bottle blond, her two henchmen complete with their naff home video will no-doubt impress some. But frankly if this were representative of the Scottish business scene; if this were what we as a nation were placing on the global stage then I could only suggest we pull the plug on the country and let it sink into the sea....

This is to business TV what a Ratner’s Rose Bowl is to fine silver!