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Branding New York Times Donald Trump

Trump 'brand' is hurt by steady retreat from his resorts and restaurants, New York Times reports

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By Laurie Fullerton | Freelance Writer

October 20, 2016 | 4 min read

The New York Times illustrated how, bit by bit, Donald Trump is tarnishing his brand by showing how choices by quiet, respectable people have turned away from his golf clubs, restaurants, wines, and even ties.

Trump Tower
Trump Tower

The Times interviewed types who are not placard-waving protestors but men like Morrie Gold who is a 69-year-old retired doctor in Pennsylvania.

Gold and 11 other golfing friends made a bold statement by cancelling their annual trip to a Florida resort owned by Donald J. Trump to express their disgust with his remarks about women, immigrants and minorities, according to the article.

“For me,” Mr. Gold said, “it’s an ethical statement.”

The Times also reported that although political demonstrations are alien to Margaret Riordan, who is a self-proclaimed “old white lady from Illinois,” when friends invited she and her husband to dinner at a restaurant within Chicago’s Trump International Hotel and Tower there she said simply “pick another place.”

Across the country, voters alarmed by the tenor of Mr. Trump’s campaign and the emerging accounts of his personal conduct are engaging in spontaneous, unorganized and inconspicuous acts of protest against his that take direct aim at perhaps his most prized possession: his brand name, the Times notes.

In more than two dozen interviews, individuals are expunging the once-esteemed brand from their lives, closets, golf bags and bookshelves. They have thrown out — or cut up — Trump neckties, called off stays at Trump hotels, even stopped imbibing Trump wines, the article states.

Gary Berry, a military veteran and Gold Star father whose son died while serving in the Army, used to love Mr. Trump’s sparkling wines. He bought the ornate bottles, stamped with the candidate’s heavily serifed surname, near his hometown, Charlottesville, Va., for special occasions like the birth of a grandchild and wedding anniversaries. That stopped the moment Mr. Trump mocked the parents of Humayun Khan, an Army captain who was killed in Iraq, the Times writes.

“I am sorry, that’s just not what you do,” Mr. Berry said from inside a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall, where he was chatting with fellow veterans. “Trump is despicable in my mind. I’m not buying Trump anymore.”

Organized, noisy demonstrations are a fixture of election seasons, and they have bedeviled both Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton throughout the presidential campaign. But the scattered retail rebukes of Mr. Trump are something new: independent acts of protest by everyday consumers who feel that voting against Mr. Trump would not be a sufficient reproach, the Times notes.

They are animated, they said, not just by his inflammatory statements or allegations of predatory behavior toward women — which he has denied — but by the belief that the wealth that powers his candidacy was in many ways amassed on their backs, one best-selling book, dress shirt or hotel stay at a time.

“There’s never been a presidential candidate that’s had a product that I had bought before,” said Nadav Ullman, 26, an entrepreneur who has a standing coffee meeting with his business partner in the food court of Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan.

Or at least he used to. As Mr. Trump marched toward the Republican nomination, Mr. Ullman was startled by what he saw as Mr. Trump’s strategy of “bigotry and racism.” He moved his weekly meeting outside to a bench in Central Park, grabbing coffee from a Wafels & Dinges vendor on the sidewalk.

“It kind of came down to the idea that going to Trump Tower — in a very small way, no doubt, but in some capacity — would support him,” Mr. Ullman said in the Times article.

Besides, he added, the coffee at Trump Tower was never very good. “It was a win on multiple levels,” he said.

Branding New York Times Donald Trump

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