Strike up the ballyhoo and roll out the red carpet: New York real estate mogul Donald J. Trump is back. His “reality” program “The Apprentice” will once again show viewers how hawking glasses of lemonade for $1,000 apiece will pave the path to business success.
I’m mystified at the show’s following. Beyond marketing himself, what does this man have to sell, and what can he really teach his viewers, much less his apprentices?
Strike up the ballyhoo and roll out the red carpet: New York real estate mogul Donald J. Trump is back. His “reality” program “The Apprentice” will once again show viewers how hawking glasses of lemonade for $1,000 apiece will pave the path to business success.
I’m mystified at the show’s following. Beyond marketing himself, what does this man have to sell, and what can he really teach his viewers, much less his apprentices?
Want relationship marketing lessons from a tycoon? Pick up a used copy of the sadly out-of-print “Fire and Ice” by Andrew Tobias. While not about direct marketing – Revson built the print-advertising-reliant Revlon cosmetics empire – it contains a number of gems regarding relationship management, of employees, shareholders, and yes, customers.
Take employee relations. The book recounts an interview with a potential employee Revson was trying to hire. During a dinner meeting, the interviewee said “I hear… that you devour people. That you think you own them seven days a week.”
Revson delivered a rambling response, which, according to the book, stretched until three in the morning, at which point he made a phone call to one of his sales managers.
A bit later, the sales manager, who had recently been hired by Revson, stumbled into the restaurant, bleary eyed and confused. He had, after all, just been awakened and summoned in the middle of the night from his Connecticut home to New York, where the interview was being conducted.
“Kiddie,” Revson said to the confused sales manager, “tell him I don’t own you.”
The interviewee did take the position with Revlon, and the fellow who had been jerked out of bed quit the day his contract was up.
Revson’s control-freak nature extended to shareholder meetings as well. He hated them so much that he went great lengths to discourage attendance, including eliminating the free cosmetics usually distributed to employees at such meetings and removing the audience microphones, making audience questions difficult.
This finally became too much for one female stockholder, who began her question by lambasting Revson about the stock price. She finished by addressing a subject that was no doubt on the minds of many of her more reserved colleagues – the discontinued giveaways:
“You’re such a big company and you can’t afford to give anything more? Why shouldn’t we get a little something more? You don’t serve anything here and there are no microphones and…Well, this is the dullest meeting I ever attended. I go to Pfizer and a lot of others, and I certainly get much more.”
And then this stockholder, as recounted by author Tobias, delivered the most wonderful line about loyalty marketing I’ve ever read:
“At least if we lose with them, I enjoy losing.”
Folks, any company that has customers making that sort of claim has loyalty. When The Donald is able to offer those sorts of nuggets of wisdom, I’ll tune in for season two.
To respond to the opinions in this column, please contact rlevey@primediabusiness.com
