Case study Tiger Woods

On November 25, 2009, supermarket tabloid The National Enquirer published a story claiming that Woods had an extramarital affair with nightclub manager Rachel Uchitel‎,[a claim she denied. The story began to attract media attention when Woods had a car accident a day and a half later. Interest in the story grew until San Diego cocktail waitress Jaimee Grubbs publicly claimed

in the gossip magazine Us Weekly that she had a two and a half year affair with Woods, producing voice and text messages that she said Woods left her. Over a few days there was increased speculation and thousands if not millions of web articles, blogs. Tweets. These clearly expressed and defined popular opinions about the event.

Because of this and statements made by Tiger Woods afterwards several companies endorsing him issued public statements that they were reconsidering their endorsements of Tiger Woods. For an athlete earning USD 100 million a year mostly from endorsements this is likely to prove costly for him. However the “buck” does not stop there. Shareholders of Nike, Gatorade and other Tiger Woods sponsors lost a collective $5 billion to $12 billion in the wake of the scandal involving his extramarital affairs, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Davis.

The moral of this story is rumours and personal crises are costly for everyone involved in a celebrities life , career or brand. The importance of managing these crises and pre-empting them cannot be stressed enough. It only takes public opinion to turn studios, commercial sponsors and other organisations against a particular entertainer, actor, singer or celebrity. This is proven by the fact that Tiger Woods is not the first celebrity or even athlete to have an extramarital crisis. Other athletes have come out of similar crises commercially unharmed because public opinions have not been against them. With our expertise, infrastructure and technology, we have the power to manipulate public opinion.

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