Marketing professor gives 'national phenomenon' a local angle

By Tom Gresham

Tense, high-pressure boardroom exchanges have given Donald Trump’s television show “The Apprentice” its signature appeal for five seasons, attracting viewers with Trump’s aggressive manner and memorably succinct “You’re fired!” dismissal to unlucky contestants.

David Urban, Ph.D., a marketing professor at VCU, enjoys Trump’s bombast in the boardroom, but he reserves his keenest attention for the more anonymous contestants who strive to bask in Trump’s elusive praise. Each week, two teams of contestants are given a business-related assignment to complete. Each team’s showing is evaluated and weighed, and Trump elects to fire someone from the show based on their performance. In the end, one contestant remains and earns a plum one-year contract working for Trump.

For four seasons, Urban has been analyzing the contestants and detailing business lessons to be culled from the show for the “Deconstructing the Trumpster” column he writes for Richmond.com. He also wrote a column, “Martha’s Breakdown,” during the lone season of “The Apprentice: Martha Stewart.”

Urban said “The Apprentice” provides an opportunity to see how basic business principles apply to various real-world projects in a format that’s easy to follow. He enjoys analyzing the relative successes of the contestants in their tasks, using the “Business Lessons Learned” section of each column to explain how each team either flourished or skidded off the tracks.

“Most people who watch the show really want to see what happens in the last 15-20 minutes when Trump gets in the boardroom,” Urban said. “They’re bored with the actual tasks for the contestants. But for me, as a professor, that’s where the learning experience is.”

Urban’s take on the show mixes sharp business analysis with an often amusing commentary on the show’s soap opera-like clash of personalities. The column has attracted significant attention from readers, according to Polly Roberts, co-editor of Richmond.com.

“David started writing his column for us in September 2004, pretty much at the height of the show, and it was an instant hit,” Roberts wrote in an e-mail. “Even as the show itself lost some of its luster this year — as David has mentioned in some of his articles — the column continues to get great readership and feedback from all over the country.”

The notice sometimes has surprised Urban. Last year, Urban used a gift certificate to purchase “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald,” an unauthorized biography of Trump by New York Times reporter Timothy O’Brien. Soon after purchasing the book, Urban settled into a chair at home and began to read. It did not take long for him to discover that he had drawn a mention in the book’s first chapter. O’Brien used Urban’s “Apprentice” column as an example of how various college faculty members were using the hit television show for instructional purposes.

O’Brien’s take on the column was not entirely positive, suggesting that the lessons Urban elucidated were simple “bromides.”

But Urban says that’s essentially the point. Urban does not believe the exercises on “The Apprentice” reveal great hidden truths, but that they illuminate certain core principles that reappear time and again in the business world. The key, he said, is that there are basics to business success that are so simple that people too often race past them in their drive to be “brilliant.”

“It’s just like sports in some ways,” Urban said. “In football, you can diagram plays all day, but you’ve still got to block and tackle. In business, it’s the same thing. You’ve got to be successful in your ‘blocking and tackling.’ The point is often not to be brilliant and revolutionary, but to pay attention to these things that tend to recur.”

Urban said contestants on “The Apprentice” are typically successful entrepreneurs who have found significant success largely through their own drive and intellect. Most of them are not accustomed to working in teams, particularly when they don’t have any real clout over their fellow team members.

There is a large chasm between being individually productive and being a deft manager, Urban said. For instance, the premier coaches in the NFL, where the rosters and coaching staffs are the largest in pro sports, most often had forgettable playing careers.

“It goes to show that the best individual players are often not the best people to lead a team,” Urban said. “It’s the same in business.”

Urban has used scenarios from “The Apprentice” in the classroom, though many of his students do not watch the show because “they’re usually too busy.” He said the show makes a particularly useful exercise for marketing, because the bulk of the challenges rely heavily on marketing savvy.

Urban has also delivered several presentations to business groups about “The Apprentice” and its instructive value. He said most people tell him they do not watch the show either because they don’t watch television, don’t watch reality television or don’t like Donald Trump.

“Sometimes though, after one of these talks, I’ll hear from someone who’ll say, ‘I never watch the show, but maybe I’m missing something. Maybe there’s something to be learned from it,’” Urban said.

Roberts said she has appreciated the opportunity Urban has provided Richmond.com to give a local angle to a “national phenomenon.”

“’Deconstructing the Trumpster’ has given Richmond.com a way to do this with analysis from a local VCU professor,” Roberts said. “The ‘lessons learned’ are thoughtful and can be applied to just about any business situation. It’s nice to have someone who doesn’t just analyze the show, but also gives practical advice.”

Urban said the email response to his column from readers has not been heavy but has been pretty steady. Among the missives he has received was from Mark Garrison, a contestant on “The Apprentice” in season four. When he contacted Urban, Garrison was in the midst of a public relations campaign to restore his image, which he said had suffered from his stint on “The Apprentice.” Garrison told Urban he enjoyed his column and detailed the ways Garrison believed that Trump and executive producer Mark Burnett had worked to cast Garrison in as poor a light as possible.

Urban counseled Garrison that “The Apprentice” exposure could ultimately prove fruitful. Urban compared Garrison’s situation to his own. Urban frequently comments on business issues in the media, but sometimes the quotes reporters choose to use do not necessarily burnish Urban’s image.

“I told him that in the end the net exposure would hopefully benefit him,” Urban said.

Similarly, “The Apprentice” has unquestionably done wonders for the Trump brand, Urban said, even as ratings decline for the show. Urban said Trump’s public image was suffering when the first episode of “The Apprentice” aired because of high-profile problems at a casino he owned in Atlantic City. But “The Apprentice,” which is orchestrated by Burnett, creator of the highly successful “Survivor” show, became one of TV’s highest-rated programs and Trump was thrust into the spotlight, perhaps as never before.

Trump is now viewed by the public as one of America’s shrewdest, richest and most successful businessmen, even though the facts do not support that image, according to O’Brien’s biography. Stewart was looking for a similar brand boost when she filmed her version of “The Apprentice” shortly after completing a prison sentence.

However, Urban said Stewart never showed the same charisma onscreen nor the same level of comfort in the reality show genre that Trump did. Part of the problem, Urban said, is that while Trump eagerly displayed toughness, Stewart did not want to look mean.

“She really wanted to repair her brand image and she had a reputation for being ruthless,” Urban said. “She wanted to dispel that on the show — to rehabilitate her image. So what sells the show was at odds with what she wanted to do with it. She tried to present herself as a kind, gentle version of Trump and it just didn’t work.”

NBC has a contract for another season of Trump’s “The Apprentice,” which is scheduled to air in early 2007. The next season will be set in Los Angeles instead of New York, and Urban believes it may be the show’s final run. In addition to waning audience excitement for the show, Urban said Trump himself seems poised to move ahead. A lackluster roster of candidates in season five, which concluded this week, did not help matters.

As proof, Urban points to one of Trump’s appearances on the “Don Imus Show” this season previewing an episode of “The Apprentice.” When Imus asked Trump what the contestants would be hoping to accomplish in that night’s challenge, Trump acknowledged he couldn’t remember. Instead, he said the tasks were largely irrelevant and that “all people really care about is what happens in the boardroom.”

“That was an indication to me that he was losing interest in his own show,” Urban said.

Urban, who enjoys Trump’s outsized public persona, said Trump’s ability to raise his stature through television only aids him in his business pursuits, giving him a likely edge, for instance, in negotiations.

“I don’t think the show tells us that much about him, even the snippets during the show when he gives us his words of wisdom,” Urban said. “His main interest here is not in having people understand him, but in creating and sustaining the perception that he’s larger than life. I don’t necessarily see anything wrong with that.”