Posted By The Editors | December 15th, 2009 | Category: Main Story | 4 comments 
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By Mark Lassiter
The award-winning television series, Mad Men, peels the glossy layer back from the superficial glamour of the high stakes advertising industry through the story of a fictional ad agency in the sixties. Complete with unflinching cultural references and flip hairstyles, the series plays strict attention to period details and prevalent social attitudes. Through its hard edge prism of the sixties, Mad Men also provides clues to the future and the radical cultural changes to follow.
There, advertising exists as a corporate outlet for creativity for mainstream, middle-class, young, white men. That segregated business model thrives in 2009. Conveniently, the occasional heroes of adoration, and massive indirect profits, include African-American athletes and entertainers. Unfortunately, via their human traits or death, this leased talent also comes with an expiration date.
In 1996, Creative Director Jim Riswold at Portland, Oregon’s Widen & Kennedy agency sampled the climatic scene from the movie Spartacus in a memorable television spot for golf prodigy Tiger Woods. Whether you have seen it or not, the 1960 Stanley Kubrick masterpiece, is a perfect parable for the modern day hero. Based on the novel by Howard Fast, the movie recounts the life of the rebellious slave Spartacus, played by Michael Douglas’ dad, Kirk Douglas.
In the movie’s climactic scene, each surviving former slave defies an inevitable death sentence to stand and defend the identity of their leader, shouting out “I’m Spartacus!”
In the Nike spot, one by one, young golfers, in contemporary dramatic fashion, claim, “I’m Tiger Woods.” Thus, the die was cast for Tiger Woods as a modern day Spartacus, leading his diverse army of young athletes previously bound to concrete playgrounds to the public golf course, and to the executive locker room at the local country club. How would Rome react to this frontal attack of diversity?
Sponsorships & Soap Opera
In September, Forbes announced that Tiger Woods had become the first athlete to earn one billion dollars over the course of his career. Now, just two months later, and approximately forty years after the setting for Mad Men, real life advertising executives at Nike, EA Sports, Gillette, Gatorade and AT&T have been carefully monitoring the sagging ratings for the soap opera being played in the national media with their superstar pitchman, Tiger Woods, in the role of leading man. His $105 million in endorsement deals is not only a lot of chedda, it represents a lot of jobs.
On December 13, the global consulting firm Accenture became the first sponsor to completely cut ties with Woods after six years, saying he was “no longer the right rep.”
Proctor & Gamble and Gillette have said they are limiting their use of Woods in marketing.
So far, his main sponsor, Nike, is hanging in “despite indiscretions.” Phil Knight, Nike chairman and co-founder, is quoted as saying, “When his career is over, you’ll look back on these indiscretions as a minor blip,” and described the scandal as “part of the game” of sponsorship deals.
The brilliance, and fragile nature, of Nike’s Tiger Woods arrangement is that other advertisers don’t seem to mind the presence of the trademark Nike swoosh in their ads. From a marketer’s perspective, Tiger Woods’s unique license to wear the Nike brand wherever he appears now places Nike at the focal point of his other fragile endorsement deals with American Express, Electronic Arts and Tag Heuer. Nike’s appearance in Woods’s other commercials also raises the question of whether audiences will still accept the prominent presence of the Nike swoosh, which effectively competes with other recognizable brands. Even the cash machine formerly known as Michael Jordan did not wear the Nike swoosh to every one of his marketing appearances.
Like all contracts involving professional athletes, most of his corporate partners have morality clauses in their contracts. Any inappropriate behavior would be cause for termination of any deal involving millions of dollars, along with millions of hearts and minds. Since the bizarre string of events that began to unravel with his strange car crash on the morning of November 25, opinion consultants and executives are following the polls to decide whether any brand can afford to ride in the same golf cart with brother Eldrick Woods. A spokesman for Nike said recently, “Tiger and his family have Nike’s full support… we respect Tiger’s request for privacy and our thoughts are with Tiger and his family at this time.”
Where are today’s “mad men” in the advertising industry in all this? The father of two has not been seen in public since his car crash on November 27. Citing data from the Nielsen Co., Bloomberg News reports that the last prime-time TV ad featuring Woods was a 30-second Gillette Co. commercial that aired November 29.
Beverage Digest published a report noting that Gatorade Tiger, introduced in March 2008, would be dropped on Nov. 25, two days before Tiger Woods crashed his Cadillac Escalade. John Sicher, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest, says he reported the story the week of Nov. 9, well before the National Enquirer ran with its account of Mr. Woods’ alleged affair. An unnamed PepsiCo executive released a statement saying that the company plans to utilize Woods “more broadly” across its line in 2010. If Tiger Woods fails to appear in Gatorade marketing in the coming year, as the company has promised he will, that will be news.
Woods issued a statement on December 2 that said: “I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart. I have not been true to my values and the behavior my family deserves.”
Tigers’ widely reported (cough) relationships are going to be a punch line for a while. Similarly, it hasn’t been a particularly good quarter for Woods’ fellow “Gillette Champions.” Soccer star Thierry Henry achieved global-villain status by using an illegal hand ball to set up a match deciding goal for France in a World Cup qualifying match last month, and tennis star Roger Federer soiled his immaculate perception with a cursing outburst, directed at the chair umpire, while losing to Juan Martin del Potro at the U.S. Open in September. These three amigos may not be “the best a man can get,” as Gillette’s tagline overstates, but there are few athletes better at golf, soccer and tennis.
Advertiser and sponsors will be forced to play man-to-man defense with the soap opera that keeps Tiger Woods home alone. With his public image in freefall in the wake of the embarrassing rumors and revelations about his private life, Woods has reportedly hired Los Angeles law firm Lavely & Singer to mange his media message.
The firm is reported to have worked out a deal to pay one woman, Rachel Uchitel, alleged to have had an affair with Tiger, in exchange for not talking to the media. Uchitel cancelled a New York press conference the morning of its announced date.
Who’s Got a Friend?
Public relations agencies can massage words and meet the press, but who is the running buddy that Tiger can call at three in the morning? Not one friend has spoken publicly on his behalf. Tiger’s caddy and Best Man at his 2006 wedding, Steve Williams, initially stayed far, far away in New Zealand. On Sunday, December 13, Williams finally broke his silence, telling a New Zealand newspaper that “The media has made it very difficult for my family,” that he and Tiger have discussed Tiger’s “problem,” and that while the two are good friends, Williams lives in New Zealand, “I don’t know what he does off the course,” and that he didn’t know about the incidents of infidelity.
Woods’s agent, Mark Steinberg, with Cleveland-based agency IMG, who oversees most aspects of Woods’ career, from his public image and finances to his marketing ventures and logistics, is silent and typically low key. Steinberg has been the caretaker for endorsement deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars, initiated legal action against any parties who have violated agreements with his golfer and held a vigilant position on how Tiger is portrayed.
But who is Tiger’s best male friend? Who would be his Al Cowens, driving the white Bronco in a futile escape chase? Woods has had a golf club in his hands since age 4. Evidently, that singular focus did not leave much time for male bonding. In the midst of this drama, Tiger desperately needs a fatherly hug, or butt whuppin,’ or both, from his late father, Earl Woods.
His “most favored” ratings from Gallup, and Rasmussen appear to be dropping like a large stone in water. The same pollsters conveniently forget that Martha Stewart went to prison and is back on television without missing a beat. With the first major tournament of the 2010 Professional Golfers Association Tour (PGA) a little more than three months away, sponsors are bracing for the verdict from the court of public opinion on its star personality. The 2010 Masters Tournament is scheduled to begin on April 5. According to NZHerald, “Golf is reeling at the prospect of losing its iconic market conqueror and missionary. By any standards, Woods is the foremost global sportsman since Pele and Muhammad Ali, and on his continuing popularity rides a whole coat-tail-holding industry of golf courses, competitions, equipment manufacturers and, most of all, other players, who have seen their own earnings rise handsomely along with Woods’s.”
A December 13 story in TheHuffingtonPost, headlined Golf Ratings Suffer Dramatically Without Tiger, and Networks Know It, said that, “Knee surgery sidelined Woods for eight months after his stirring win at the 2008 U.S. Open, slicing television ratings in half while he was gone. Now Woods is taking an indefinite leave from golf after admitting to marital infidelity…During the last round of negotiations, NBC focused on securing rights to tournaments that Woods was likely to play, said former MAGNA research chief Steve Sternberg…CBS and NBC declined comment.”
AP reported on December 11, quoted Tiger as announcing that, “After much soul searching, I have decided to take an indefinite break from professional golf, I need to focus my attention on being a better husband, father and person.”
The golf great is at a personal and professional crossroads. As his late father, Earl Woods would have demanded of him: “Focus Tiger, focus.” A golfer stands alone as quiet is requested from the crowd.
Mark Lassiter, was a caddie at Metropolis Country Club in Hartsdale, New York, for about a week one summer in high school. The tips simply were not worth it.
Kevin Eason is a freelance editorial cartoonist and Illustrator from NJ. His brand of satire covers news events in politics, entertainment, sports and much more. Kevin’s work features include: TVOne, NABJ, WBLS_107.5FM, EURweb and various newspapers & magazines throughout the country.
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