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Tiger’s Reputation

Dec 1, 2009 Business & Marketing, News and Blues, reputation management


I’ve always been a fan of Tiger Woods, and I always love a good reputation management story. Unfortunately, Tiger Woods’ reputation is being slaughtered at the moment. And he’s doing nothing about it.

I have to agree 100% with Andy Beal’s comments:

He owes his fans, the media, and his sponsors an explanation.Yes, he does!

They invested their time, their money, their emotional commitment to Woods. He sold them a brand and now he’s not living up to it. Just like any other “product” its customers deserve to know why it’s not “working” the way it has for the past decade or more.

Cold? Sure! And Woods can continue to hold onto his privacy if he so chooses–as Bobby Brown would say, that’s his “perogative!” But, at some point he needs to decide what’s more important, Tiger Woods the person, or Tiger Woods the brand.

Because Tiger Woods the brand is in a lot of trouble at this point.

With OTHER huge brands riding the Tiger name: Gatorade, G2, Nike, Buick, Gillette, EA Sports, and more. All of these brands will need to rethink their sponsorships and face-time with Tiger as a spokesperson if Tiger continues to dodge the press.

I sure hope Tiger considers his reputation and decides to be a bit more vocal about the incident.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 4:12 pm and is filed under Business & Marketing, News and Blues, reputation management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “Tiger’s Reputation”

  1. James O'Brien Says:

    December 2nd, 2009 at 10:55 pm

    I never thought of Tiger as a "family man". And for some reason all of this doesn't seem to impact how I "feel" about the brand Tiger. I also never bought in to the relationship with his supermodel wife. If Jon from Jon and Kate can get some, you have to imagine what Tiger has been going through. Maybe we should admire him for holding out this long before we found out about his wandering pitching wedge. Now some of these guys that have their brands intrinsically linked to their family and/or family values directly would logically have something more to worry about and that Jon dude looks like a piece of… I say this all blows over for Tiger. He's too big to fail. Interesting to see if even this can impact his game.


  2. JasonMurphy Says:

    December 4th, 2009 at 3:58 am

    I have to say I agree with you James. We all remember what happened to Kobe, right? Not much. I'd think the more old-school traditional brands like Buick and Nike will be the first ones to respond with a reduced sponsorship (or drop Tiger completely). But I'm pretty sure his contract with EA Sports won't be going anywhere soon.