Brilliant trickery on "Celebrity Apprentice" keeps the brand strong

Denver Post - NBC's "The Celebrity Apprentice" is a masterful bit of what magicians call misdirection. While you're focused on the game, the action is elsewhere. The reality is, it's a stroke of product-placement genius, disguised as a competition.

It's a vanity project that wraps itself in respectability by raising money for charity.

It's the video equivalent of "Us" magazine, pretending to be a business-school text.

"The Celebrity Apprentice" holds on to a core audience of 6.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen ratings, even against the powerhouse Country Music Awards special on CBS last week. With all the masquerading, it's doing something right.

The all-American concept balances altruism and capitalism. Players are charged with concocting advertising messages and marketing materials for sponsor's brands. If their sales pitch wins, the charity they represents wins. Whether the task is to create a Kodak storefront, a Right Guard ad, a Harry Potter 3-D experience or a Norton computer-security advertorial, there's a commercial hook.

And so Bret Michaels, former rock star, has raised $100,000 for the American Diabetes Association while pumping up his 1980s history with the band Poison and wearing an assortment of cowboy hats and bandanas with guyliner. In a recent episode he stated, "I'm not a creepy guy." (Beware of unsolicited denials.)