Selling Trump ain’t what it used to be

When Donald J. Trump announced his foray into NFTs late last year, leveraging public interest in his presidential campaign to sell cartoonish virtual trading cards depicting him as a superhero, he was mocked for retreating to his huckster impulses.

Anyone seeking insight into Mr. Trump’s decision need look no further than his corporate partner.

The online trading cards are the brainchild of Bill Zanker, a serial entrepreneur who has sold back rubs, exercise equipment, self-help courses and, at times, Donald Trump himself. Before Mr. Trump’s political rise, Mr. Zanker co-wrote a book with him, teamed up in a crowdfunding business and for several years made Mr. Trump the centerpiece of a real estate road show that sold out sports arenas. Mr. Zanker once boasted in ads of paying Mr. Trump $25,000 a minute to speak.

Times have changed for both men. Mr. Zanker’s best-known business, a for-profit education company called Learning Annex, has gone dark, and a recent foray into exercise equipment hasn’t taken off. Mr. Trump, facing multiple investigations into his conduct, including his attempts to overturn a fair election, has become far less a symbol of American prosperity than of the nation’s polarizing politics.

In business together again for the first time in more than seven years, the two are trying to revive a once-trusted formula that mixes celebrity with unabashed hype. Early sales results suggest just how difficult this project really is.

Mr. Zanker first approached the former president with the idea last year, telling him the venture could bring in as much as $100 million, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions who requested anonymity to reveal private conversations. In exchange for licensing his name and likeness, Mr. Trump will receive a significant portion of any revenue from the sale of what will be known as Trump Cards.

Mr. Trump agreed, much to the disappointment of those around him who wished he had been focused on his 2024 presidential campaign. On Dec. 14, Trump used social media to promote what he called a “big announcement”: the sale of thousands of digital cards showing him dressed, variously, as a cowboy, an astronaut and a superhero shooting laser beams out of his eyeballs. The cards looked strikingly similar to pictures of Sylvester Stallone that Mr. Zanker had commissioned for a separate NFT project last year.

The venture was an unusual step into brazen commercialism at a time when politicians typically streamline their finances: Mr. Trump formally announced his new campaign just 30 days before the NFTs were issued for sale. For Mr. Trump, who has previously sold frozen steaks, vodka, deodorant, glasses, perfumes, vitamins, shirts and mattresses, it was a shift back to branding and licensing.

Some Trump advisers worried the venture would come across as a tacky marketing gimmick. Even more troubling was the idea that every dollar spent by his supporters on the NFTs could translate into a dollar that did not contribute to Mr. Trump’s campaign, according to two people familiar with the internal conversations who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case. .

Despite Mr. Trump’s promotional efforts, the Trump cards have not yet become the cash cow they were presented as.

To date, Trump Cards sales have reached $17.3 million, generating about $5.6 million in revenue, according to an analysis by CryptoSlam, a blockchain data aggregator, for The New York Times. That total includes the original price of $99 for each of the 44,000 cards sold on the first day, plus a 10 percent royalty each time any of those cards are resold on the secondary market.

For example, when an anonymous buyer paid $43,865 on Dec. 18 for a single Trump card depicting him in black tie and tails, a $4,386.50 royalty went back to Mr. Zanker to be shared with Mr. Trump. It is not clear how the income will be distributed.

Industry experts said sales of Trump Cards were respectable, especially after a cryptocurrency crash last year. Nevertheless, they pale in comparison to other NFT projects. Perhaps the most famous, Bored Ape Yacht Club, racked up $1.57 billion in sales by 2022.

Many of the cards bearing Mr. Trump’s image were purchased by accounts that do not hold other NFTs and have not attempted to resell their holdings, according to public records. The numbers suggest that the buyers are Trump supporters rather than avid crypto traders, speculating on the value of NFTs.

“In the grand scheme of things, this rally has not replicated the big hitters that emerged during the NFT boom,” said Arda Akartuna, senior analyst at Elliptic, a blockchain research firm.

Neither Mr. Zanker nor Mr. Trump responded to inquiries about the arrangement. Kevin Mercuri, a spokesman for Mr. Zanker, confirmed his participation in the Trump NFT, noting that it was his first deal with Mr. Trump since 2015. He did not respond to questions about the exact terms of the deal.

Mr. Zanker founded the Learning Annex in 1980, using $5,000 he had saved from his bar mitzvah, according to previous interviews. It started in New York before spreading across the country, offering unconventional courses such as “How to Flirt,” “How to Talk to Your Cat” and “How to Marry Rich.”

He became a tireless promoter with a knack for making headlines. In 1982, he devised a plan to drop $10,000 in dollar bills from the Empire State Building, in a promotional stunt for the company. He ended up on the front page of The Times after he was interrupted by a bank robbery in the same building and chaos erupted in a frenzied smashing of TV reporters, police and moneybags.

While he pursued a number of ventures, including an ill-fated chain of massage emporiums called the Great American Backrub Store, his most successful venture was the Learning Annex. The classes dispensed advice on both spiritual enlightenment and financial enrichment from celebrities including Tony Robbins, the self-help guru, and George Foreman, the former heavyweight champion.

But none drew in more than Mr. Trump, whose first Learning Annex speech, delivered in 2002, was called “Thinking Big: There’s Nothing You Can’t Do!”

“Everybody could see that the Trump brand was a big thing and growing,” said Steven Schragis, the company’s national director at the time.

In 2004, Mr. Zanker started the Real Estate Wealth Expo and built it around Mr. Trump, plastering his face on thousands of copies of his course catalogs, which were stacked in boxes on seemingly every street corner in Manhattan, and on prominent billboards around. the country.

“Letting Donald Trump talk about real estate is like letting Tiger Woods give you a personal lesson on hitting a golf ball,” Zanker said in a press release. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience for anyone trying to get rich.”

Indeed, Mr. Trump’s real estate career has been a financial roller coaster. In 2005, for example, Trump wrote off over $100 million in business losses to reduce his federal taxes.

That year, Zanker boasted of paying Mr. Trump $1.5 million per appearance. Mr. Trump later acknowledged, in a court deposition, that he actually received only $400,000 in cash for each speech. The rest of the fee went to “campaign expenses” such as billboards and newspaper ads, he said.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Zanker expanded their partnership. They co-authored a book titled “Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life,” which encouraged readers to “go with your gut instincts” on important business decisions. To draw attention to the book’s launch, Mr. Zanker handed out thousands of dollars in cash at a Manhattan bookstore.

The two men founded a crowdfunding platform in 2013 to compete with Kickstarter. Mr. Trump, perhaps inspired by his partner’s flashy approach, promoted the startup by giving away three suitcases of cash at an event in the Trump Tower lobby.

When Mr. Trump turned to politics, he stepped away from the crowdfunding side. But Mr. Zanker was still able to strike another deal, helping negotiate his partner’s next book, “Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again.”

While Mr. Trump was in the White House, Zanker’s businesses struggled. FundAnything stopped posting new donation drives in early 2015. The Learning Annex stopped promoting online courses, and held what appears to have been one of its last classes – a talk on podcasting with Adam Carolla, a comedian, in Irvine, California .

Mr. Zanker was looking for new ventures. He opened a fitness club that boasted of always having a fully stocked bar. During the pandemic, he sought $10 million from investors in a home exercise equipment company, but publicly available documents suggest he raised only $372,000. Home gyms never came on the market.

Last March, Mr. Zanker unveiled his latest reinvention, announcing plans to sell 9,997 NFTs featuring fanciful images of Mr. Stallone.

Despite considerable promotion by Mr. Zanker and Mr. Stallone, the PlanetSLY cards were never released. Mr. Mercuri blamed the “crash in the cryptocurrency market.” A spokeswoman for Stallone said she was not authorized to comment on the matter.

In August, Mr. Zanker put his 20-acre ranch in Park City, Utah, up for sale for 445 Bitcoin, or about $9 million at the time, announcing in a press release that it was the first time a house was available for cryptocurrency. The release also noted that Mr. Zanker is “now working on a major NFT project with a major celebrity.”

The property is still on the market, now for a cash price of $11 million.

The current listing reads in part: “Owner must sell – make an offer!!!”

Maggie Haberman, Leg Prosthesis and Russ Buettner contributed reporting.