Just caught up with yesterday's episode of TV2's Apprentice NZ at lunch time on TVNZ on Demand. 

Yesterday's episode had a challenge from Microsoft which was interesting - but apart from that, it had the usual back stabbing and bitching that you get every week in Apprentice inbetween the contestants.

I seen Microsoft before in the Trump version of Apprentice (USA version) - where the contestants had to create campaigns for XBOX or Office live. But the NZ challenge was much more simple - they have to create a Marketing strategy for Microsoft Security Essentials.

It starts off with Microsoft's new marketing director Paul Muckleston (who has not aged much in the seven years or so he's been in Europe) and Ben Green giving the two teams a brief.

The boys team (headed by one of the girls from the other team) did a good enough campaign - with a slick presentation (compared to the other team that forgot to move on to the second slide (Damn! someone should have told them about the auto timer feature in Powerpoint).

What was interesting was the winning entrant was hammered by one of the advisors who sat in the panel for including some Coffee vouchers in the take-home brochure with the message "Here is one less thing for you to worry about". He suggested including the coffee voucher was weird and did not impress the Microsoft executive.

And when the team was challenged about this in the board room, no one pointed any fingers and they were united like teams should be and they all took the blame which was admirable.

I suppose there is a thin line between a token of good will and a blatant bribery. When does a innocent gesture like free coffee vouchers become unethical or crosses the line as a bribe?