As Tiger Woods stands poised to return to golf at this year’s Masters, there’s a lot of discussion about whether he can return to any semblance of his prior standing as God’s gift to celebrity spokesmanship. I’ve been thinking today about how his re-emergence could potentially be a huge opportunity for a forward-thinking brand.
For instance, there could be a pretty straight connection between Tiger and brands that stand for taking control of your future. Or brands whose principles include humility, forgiveness, or personal strength. And these are just the obvious, top-of-mind alignments.
Just imagine a brand maximizing the power of this type of aligned message through a partnership with the “new” Tiger Woods. Done right this allows a brand to take the lead on showing respectful empathy for a man who many US consumers want to like again but don‘t feel like they should. Giving them a way back in, acknowledging he’s not perfect but that he’s still great and that he’ll only be better and stronger for this trial, could create or improve a brand’s standing with a huge potential consumer base.
And just imagine the earned media that would come with signing Tiger to his first major sponsorship deal post-scandal.
All that said it could totally backfire. Whether Tiger is truly reformed and whether his game will have suffered for his lack of focus since November remains to be seen. He may be neither the man nor the athlete we want him to be. But my two pennies are that an opportunity may very well exist and brands need to thinking right now about how they might capitalize on it.
