Being trumped.

• Author: Campbell, Spencer
• Position: UPFRONT - Interview of Donald Trump - Interview

At the end of our 13--minute, 52-second interview Donald Trump turned to the head golf pro, pointed to me and said, "Good-looking guy." A BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA contingent--our art director, a freelance photographer and I--had given up a chunk of our weekend to travel almost an hour to Mooresville. When we got there, we waited hours, largely ignored by him and his entourage in favor of television reporters. We had been promised we'd get an hour with him. A truck had hit a transformer knocking out the electricity. That caused the lighting of our photos--this would be the only time we'd he able to shoot him--to suffer.

I wish I could say that his stroking my ego was no salve, that I was too savvy and sophisticated to pay heed to a compliment from someone who never met a superlative he didn't like. It's embarrassing to be seduced by celebrity, hut I left Trump National Golf Club, Charlotte thinking, "He's a really charming guy." That is, until I came to work Monday and, alter comparing notes, learned he had said more or less the same thing to the photographer, our art director and at least one of the TV reporters.

When I started researching this month's cover story on Trump (page 48), 1 was sure that his name, and anything he attached it to, had lost its luster--he has been hawking bottled water, after all. Brand dilution waters down a marque, often making it meaningless. "Kraft used to he about cheese and salad dressing," says Sheri Bridges, a marketing professor at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem. "It put its name on so many things...