Many of us wish this story would just go away, but it won’t…so here are a few lessons for students of the media.<\/p>\n
#1: ALL celebrity endorsement deals come with some risk. If you had asked executives at Nike, Gatorade, etc. whether there was risk associated with hiring Tiger Woods as a celebrity spokesperson, they likely would have replied that the risk was minimal. But if they thought it was zero, they were wrong. Will it do long-term damage to their brands and to the Tiger Woods brand? It is too soon to tell, but there will be fall out for Tiger and every other celebrity that has a “squeaky clean” image.<\/p>\n
#2: Crisis Management PR has changed dramatically in the age of cable news, the blogosphere, and the twitterverse. PR agents have got to get ahead of the story and be much more transparent than in the past. Remember, the media (both traditional and new media) exist to uncover and distribute “dirt” and attempts to stonewall will only compound the problem.<\/p>\n
#3: As we’ve been reminded recently by the parents of balloon boy and the White House party crashing Salahi’s, reality TV culture makes people do crazy things for their 15 minutes of fame\/notoriety. Anyone remotely “connected” to the Tiger Woods drama will see opportunity to cash in by playing the tabloid media. Releasing cell phone messages and scheduling press conferences strings along the media and extends their window of opportunity.<\/p>\n
#4: <editorial warning>There is no such thing as a private “transgression.”<\/editorial warning><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Many of us wish this story would just go away, but it won’t…so here are a few lessons for students of the media. #1: ALL celebrity endorsement deals come with some risk. If you had asked executives at Nike, Gatorade, etc. whether there was risk associated with hiring Tiger Woods as a celebrity spokesperson, they … <\/p>\n