Cooney's Commentary

The firms that hired Tiger Woods as a spokesman wisely pulled all their advertising for the foreseeable future. I always thought it was bit strange that he had so many sponsorship gigs…. Gillette, Nike, Gatorade, Electronic Arts,  AT&T, Tag Heuer and Accenture. I was always most surprised Accenture used him as a spokeperson – when I think about Accenture, I imagine teams of people working to solve client’s problems. I never thought a solo athlete conveyed the right message, but obviously some marketing folks disagree.

Its amazing to me that he didn’t have enough sense to weigh the risks associated with his extracurricular activities against the damage to his personal brand. Certainly its questionable that we put any individual on a pedestal, especially an athlete, (sorry but I am so bored by most sports). But when you agree to become a spokesman, people are paying you for a perception – a positive perception. He has so much at stake financially, and that doesn’t even touch how this will affect his family.

His image transformed from conveying excellence to being an embarrassing cliche.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/09/news/companies/tiger_woods_commercials/index.htm?cnn=yes

This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 2:08 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.