Posted on 12/10/2009 1:13:25 AM PST by malkee
As Tiger Woods uses silence to deal with the uproar over his alleged infidelities, his sponsors apparently are following suit, quietly not running his ads until the worst is over.
Rick Burton, onetime brand manager for Miller beer and former chief marketing officer for the U.S. Olympic Committee, doesn't think this means Tiger is no longer a bulletproof brand.
"If a sponsor cuts him loose, that makes it look like the relationship was tenuous to begin with," Burton said Wednesday. "I don't think Accenture, Nike or Gillette want to do that. Sometimes what they'll do is take an athlete and put him into a probation period, a quiet window."
And for Woods the ad window has been very quiet. According to data compiled by the Nielsen ratings company, no Woods ads have appeared on television since Nov. 29, two days after he crashed his Cadillac SUV outside his home in Florida.
According to Forbes, Woods has endorsement deals worth $110 million with Accenture, Nike, PepsiCo Inc.'s Gatorade (which is discontinuing its Tiger Focus drink), Tag Heuer watches, Electronic Arts Inc., Upper Deck, NetJets, TLC Vision Corp. and Gillette. Although attempts to reach Nike, Accenture and PepsiCo Wednesday were unsuccessful, no spokesman from any of the companies connected to Woods has indicated the deals are in trouble.
Yet.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Nike is just waiting for the other shoe to drop...
Silence really is the only way to deal with this. Tiger is in a hole (literally) and if he opens his mouth, he keeps on digging. Better to keep his mouth shut and wait for the next big news story to come along and push this out of the headlines.
Haven’t both shoes dropped already? I guess the only thing that hasn’t been verified is a “love child.” What are the sponsors waiting for?
Nike will be the last to drop him. They’ll probably give him a bonus for his behavior.
Word is though that most of his contracts are rock solid. He will get paid whether they use his face or not.
Advertisers are forced to make some tough decisions. Think about it. Here comes a young Tiger, out of the ghetto or whatever, and he basically transforms the world of gold from an old-fogie impotent mid-life-crisis white guy sport into a young, virile, diversified place to be.
Then, the SHTF, and Tiger shows himself to be another NBA wannabee, sleeping with 25,000 women (and having a particular penchant for young blonde women, not that that by itself is any kind of racial stereotype), proves his commitment to family, etc are almost nonexistent...
Dude could have set up golf tourneys anywhere in the world if he wanted, especially the countries where his latest squeezes live but NO... he liked the ones working at the local Dennys or whatever.
Great golfer but not way up there in the cerebral category... wrong head doing the thinkin...
Their going to use the “Kobe” model for how to deal with this.
Don’t expect to see his commercials back anytime soon. While advertising campaigns will be cancelled, his contracts for most of these will not, for now.
A few will outright cancel them. Like Sprite did with Kobe.
But what his PR people will do is a very cordinated longterm plan of reinventing his image and how he sells.
Kobe went from being portrayed as the “nice guy”, to just concentrating on his game performances and his endorsements revolve mainly around the sport of basketball the sports equipment/clothing companies, etc...
Getting tools like Spike Lee to make documentaries on him portraying him still as a devoted husband/father.
Sure he’s not making anywhere near the endorsement money he made before, but he’s still making a lot.
Tiger Woods will over time lose most of the “outside the world of golf” endorsements, but I’m sure his deal with Nike isn’t going anywhere and most of the other golf related ones.
Tiger actually has it better than Kobe because the worse he’s facing is a messy divorce and his hos dishing dirt on him. He’s not facing a trial for rape like Kobe did.
Tiger is from Orange County. His dad was a Lt. Col. Hardly “out of the ghetto.”
OK. That’s fine.
I had no idea of what his actual background was, and actually considered googling it before I posted that.
So my statement shows probably what a great many Americans would think or assume.
And that assumption works for advertisers.
Saying that he’s really a bored spoiled middle class studmuffin don’t cut it from an advertising perspective. He’s gotta be the Saintly black savior who stands for American working family values.
Two things.
Golf ain’t basketball and two entirely different demographics follow the games.
Kobe still can play basketball and win games. If Tiger’s head is messed up and he stops winning tournaments, his endorsement situation changes quickly.
All this is a very interesting study of pro sports, advertising and how the two interface.
All this is a very interesting study of pro sports, advertising and how the two interface.
Kinda the point I was trying to make.
Think about it, how much does the average NFL fan spend during the year that benefits the NFL?
Unless he has season tickets and buys the merchandise, what does a six pack per sunday add up to?
But golfers are totally the other side - clubs, balls, green fees, caddies, membership fees, and we ain’t talkin nickel and dime stuff, we’re talking some serious bucks.
Who knows? Maybe there will be a revolt against Tiger as a sponsor because the people who have those bucks are indeed the middle aged white guys using the Touch-of-Gray stuff, not high school dropouts watching skateboarding on NBC Saturday afternoon.
Interesting dynamics.
IMHO - The rules of golf and its protocols are about *honor and integrity*. Other requirements for proper dress, good course manners, self respect and courtesy to other players are a huge part of golf culture.
Those who love the game for its civilized behavior; i.e. those old, rich, retired guys & gals...TW's fall from grace will not matter - because they are not in TW's sponsors’ demographics.
New sponsors will probably include: Ambien, Viagra and Maurys Mattress
Very much the way tennis was.
I started playing in 69 or 70, the days of Laver and Newcombe.
Then comes this smart know it all called Serena, who threw a fit and made the whole thing look bad.
But she can blame McEnroe for that...
;-)
An that really is what they tell us about sports - it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game, and try to play the game better. Are they lying through the teeth by rewarding winners with huge endorsement contracts?
So I will offer a 4:19 AM simile:
It’s not if you are drunk or sober, it’s how you drink the beer!
What if it no longer is about ‘sport’ and ‘competition?’ What if it even is no longer about ‘how you play the game’ and only now about ‘entertainment?’ Sort of like professional wrestling.
Witness the current issue with NBA referee Tim Donaghy and his assertions of how badly the game is rigged.
Do the TV viewers even care?
Rush Limbaugh recently said on his radio show that there’s “worse” out there. Limbaugh wouldn’t be specific since it’s all rumor, but I’ll bet the sponsors have a pretty good idea...
All my wife’s golf clubs (employer) sent all the apparel and clubs back to Nike. They are not an isolated example either.
Most of his products were aimed directly at them through EA video games, Wheaties, Nike, Gatorade, etc...
If these sponsors retain him and push his ugly face toward kids, then they are no better than the prostitutes that Roids was having sex with.
Williams threatened the life of a human being.
BIG difference.
You’d think the Trojan company would be offering Tiger big bucks to do commercials.
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