The real breakthrough, however, came when Mark Burnett, head of a reality TV empire, pitched Trump on the idea of The Apprentice. Up until then, Trump had been busy coping with the fallout from his bankruptcies and the impatience of his bankers. Now, out of the blue, he was being offered a chance to leap into the stratosphere of Superbrands, those rarefied companies earning their enormous profits primarily by building up their brand meaning and then projecting it hither and yon, liberated from the burden of having to make their own products—or, in Trump’s case, build his own buildings.
