Tiger, We Hardly Knew Ya

The list of Tiger Woods' sexual conquests had barely reached the double digits when Accenture fired him as its celebrity spokesathlete because, as experts explained, it needed to go in a completely different direction. Detaching him from the company's brand would be painful and take time, but it was necessary.

Have you seen Accenture's ads lately? Tiger has already been replaced by elephants, lizards, and fish in a $40-50 million annual branding spend that doesn't seem to have skipped a beat.

Woods had been hired in 2003 "...because his golf game was a metaphor for 'high performance delivered' [the company's branding slogan]," according to Accenture's corporate communications person. His name was used as ad copy -- "We know what it takes to be a Tiger" and "Go on. Be a Tiger." -- and he appeared in a whopping 83% of the company's ads last year. 

And then it was over. Accenture reports that it hasn't suffered an economic impact because of the scandal. There's been no news reports of big name businesses jumping ship to consultancies with different pitchmen or corporate mascots. Contrary to the hopes of the branding experts, the residual damage of having a spokesathlete who is a serial womanizer with atrociously bad taste proved to be just about zilch. 

This begs the question of what he was worth in the first place.

Think how many businesses spend oodles of cash to promote celebs or make-believe characters for their branding, all in pursuit of some imaginary lasting value. I get the awareness benefit and all, but the Tiger fiasco isn't a teachable moment for the benefits or pitfalls of celebrity endorsements, it is?

Comments

[P.K. Prothe]

Accenture went through it's own rebranding to rid itself of the baggage from the Enron scandle under its original name, Arthur Andersen / Andersen. They've successfully done this, so I'm not too surprised that Tiger didn't have a huge effect. Current clients likely see the value they're getting from Accenture. I think the use of celebrity spokespeople is overrated. Building a brand goes far beyond the advertising, as you've often written - it's so much about the customer experience, values, etc. It's also easy to filter out celebs as a viewer. They're too common. Not remarkable in terms of grabbing attention. See ya Tiger . . .

[Jonathan]

Excellent point. I was thinking of the imaginary costs to the imaginary brand, but there were a lot of posters thrown in dumpsters at major airports because of this mess...

[Savagespeaking]

No economic impact? What about having to replace every damn poster in every airport in America? All that collateral must have cost something to change. What is Accenture, anyway?