Fued for Thought

By SAMANTHA ETTUS
Scripps Howard News Service
31-MAR-06

When celebrities spend significant time in the public eye, they build up political capital - i.e. goodwill with their fans. The challenge is to use that capital wisely. Finding potent examples of capital at work is not hard: Oprah uses her capital brilliantly by enlisting her fans to support her favorite causes and continues to refill her tank daily, while Tom Cruise has squandered most of his hard earned capital with his recent antics in defense of Scientology.

Donald Trump and Martha Stewart, two of our biggest cultural icons, have been wasting their capital lately by launching a public war of words, yielding off-screen action far more dramatic than their on-screen reality. The source of tension is Stewart's failed version of The Apprentice, which debuted last season to dismal ratings. When Stewart spilled the beans to Newsweek about the original premise of her show, in which she was allegedly supposed to tell Trump he was fired and continue the Apprentice legacy without him, Trump became irate. According to Stewart, Trump had a change of heart and wanted to keep his show afloat, putting her in the awkward position of stewarding a lesser carbon copy of the original.

Trump immediately fought back, wielding a shotgun when a pin prick would have sufficed. In a letter to Stewart that he shared with Newsweek, Trump not only blamed Stewart for her own Apprentice failure, but also sunk to uncommon depths by mentioning her stock scandal and criticizing her daytime talk show. Though it would have been easy for Stewart to become further embroiled in the verbal sparring, she handled the situation with impressive poise, issuing a statement remarking that the mean-spirited letter didn't sound like something her old friend Donald Trump would author.

Though Trump was justifiably peeved by Stewart's public airing of behind the scenes events, his scathing retort left a scar on his brand.  With the dust settled, it is Trump, not Stewart, who looks like the angry, bitter and disloyal competitor. Ironically, Trump had never been blamed for Stewart's failed attempt at primetime supremacy, so distancing himself from the show - which was canceled after only one season - would not have been a challenge. By remaining at the helm of his own Apprentice show, now in its fifth successful season, Trump would have naturally sidestepped any significant association with the Stewart property.

Assessing Stewart's situation, certainly the Domestic Goddess was largely to blame for her show's disappointing ratings, and the show's collapse diminished some of the capital she had earned after emerging from prison to renewed popularity.  Among many poor decisions relating to the show, Stewart's inclusion of daughter Alexis - who proved a lifeless energy vacuum and cast an atypically dim light on the Martha Stewart brand - was a terrible mistake and a foolish use of her power.  Yet none of this justified Trump's behavior or approached in negative impact the effect of Trump's caustic remarks on his own brand.

In treating Stewart with such vitriol, Trump harmed his personal brand in two ways: his defensive behavior tied him more closely to the canceled show than ever before, and his cruel words showed us a ruthless side of his personality previously reserved only for business negotiations and ex-wives. Trump has earned his enormous fan base over many years with his affable yet tough and professional demeanor. Of all people, Trump should know best that it takes far less time and effort to demolish a building than erect a new one, and the same calculus holds true for building powerful brands. 

Remember: the most dependable road to the top is to treat your brand as your greatest asset.

(Samantha Ettus' second book, "The Experts' Guide to Life at Home" (Random House) is now in bookstores. She welcomes your comments at Samantha@celebrityassets.com.)