Full Frontal PR Report

Last week Richard Laermer took The Donald to task and said that a world spawning The Apprentice needs amending quickly. Our readers wrote in droves – here are some responses:

This was my favorite piece. Everything written was 100% true! I work hard and read a lot about PR and business and when I have a spare minute the last thing I want to watch is some “reality” show that has zero reality in it. The contestants were cast based on videos and I am guessing 90% of them don’t have a clue about anything other than their own agendas. They were all relatively beautiful people. Where is the reality in that? Doesn’t America want to see a slightly overweight, possibly a little unattractive person take those “pretty boys” to school. Maybe, but I am guessing the network execs didn’t. Wow, some reality. Kudos to using The Simpsons and Win Ben Stein’s Money as examples of quality television. I would agree that those are two of the finest shows ever on television! I enjoy mind numbing TV that takes me away from the last 12 hours of reality. What is wrong with that?

Mitch Bakken
ABC Seamless Steel Siding
Fargo, North Dakota

It was interesting to read your perspectives on The Apprentice. As a PR/marketing communications pro, I’m intrigued by Trump’s ability to maintain a solid brand reputation through thick and thin. He’s had his ups and downs, but given that perception is reality, his name does seem to command a premium price when it comes to real estate. A good friend of mine used to really work in marketing for him (several years ago) and when I was “behind the scenes” as a casual observer, it was really interesting to see how things happened.

John Fries
Public Relations and Marketing Communications Management
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

It was with awe, appreciation and wonder in which I read your “Trump This” piece in your most excellent bi-weekly report. The Donald always struck me as a pompous asshole that seemed very savvy at self-promotion.

Marc Preven
NEWrotic New York City Experience
Queens, New York

We no longer watch television in our house, though we certainly read about it and I catch snippets at my sports club or in bars. One thing I’ve noticed is that as America’s waistline grows, so too do those of the actors. There are a lot of pudgy guys on commercials for beer and fast food joints.

On the subject of reality shows (Donald Trump), one of the best is CBC’s Venture, a half-hour weekly business show which has been doing this sort of thing successfully for 20 years. I was the subject of two feature stories (about 10 minutes) in the early 1990’s.

A camera crew follows an entrepreneur through his or her daily pursuits, capturing all the drama of sales meetings, late deliveries, and real arguments with partners, celebrations and disappointments.. This is dramatic stuff that always shows the underdog and it’s quite popular and well done. Now that’s reality TV!

Mark Ellwood
GetMoreDone.com
Toronto, Ontario

I am so thrilled about an honest assessment of Trump and The Apprentice. They keep coming to [our company] asking for products to place on the show and telling me how we are missing out a great opportunity. And I keep saying—no freaking way.

Firm Name Withheld
City, too

I think the beauty of The Apprentice is that while it’s SO real—super-real in a sense. Real people vying for a real job from a real person who will pay them real money and set up real challenges where they have to sell real goods and services to real laborers in a real city and rent real real estate and meet a real megalomaniac billionaire and a contestant has a real mother with real cancer…

Viewers have fallen in love with what’s fake about it. We love the fake board room, which everyone knows isn’t a board room. We love the fake persona of Trump and his facade of his own success. We love the staged romance of “Nick & Amy.” We love how a mysterious buyer always comes in at the last minute for every single freakin’ challenge just so a politically correct final four can include a woman and a minority. We—the collective Apprentice viewers, and I became one of them after trying to resist at first—accept that every last bit of it is fake, and that’s the beauty of it. Sure, Trump and all things Trump are a sham, a shame, a shonda, but it looks so real we can almost touch it.

And maybe that’s why the show isn’t as far a cry from Hill Street Blues and Freaks & Geeks from the viewer’s perspective. These long-gone classics did such a great job at blurring the line between what’s fake and real. I mean, sure, they were scripted, but they felt SO TRUE. The Apprentice does the same thing, from a different angle, taking what’s real and making it just fake enough that we can enjoy it. And THAT is the line that viewers live for, that line right between reality and fantasy that we want to live on ourselves. Politics, news, and all that real stuff is so distant from viewers and so damn canned—same speeches, same news every single day—that it’s just not real enough for us.

David Berkowitz
eMarketer.com
New York City, New York