The last prime-time ad featuring the 33-year-old golfer was a 30-second Gillette Co. spot ran on Nov. 29, according to New York- based Nielsen. Woods also was absent from ads on weekend sports programs tracked, including NFL games, Nielsen said.
The No. 1 ranked golfer’s standing with the public has plunged in the wake of reports of infidelity that followed a Nov. 27 car accident outside his home near Orlando, Florida. Woods’s ranking among celebrity endorsers tumbled to 24th from 6th, according to the Davie Brown Index, which is used to gauge the ability of personalities to influence shoppers.
“Near term, you’ve got to pull the ads,” said Larry Novenstern, managing director at Optimedia, a New York-based unit of Publicis, the French advertising company. “A transgression of this type in his personal life is never good but if anyone can weather a storm, it’s probably Tiger Woods.”
The Pac-10 pulled an advertisement featuring Woods, a Stanford alumnus, from the Dec. 3 Oregon-Oregon State college football game, Jim Muldoon, a conference spokesman, told CNBC. He didn’t return a phone call or e-mail seeking comment.
Woods has endorsement agreements with Accenture Plc, Nike Inc., PepsiCo Inc.’s Gatorade, Tag Heuer International SA watches, Electronic Arts Inc. and Procter & Gamble Co.’s Gillette. None has said they’ve changed their marketing.
Mark Steinberg, Woods’s agent, and Glenn Greenspan, a spokesman, didn’t respond to phone messages and e-mails seeking comment.
$1 Billion Earnings
The golfer’s $110 million in annual income from endorsements and tournaments, as estimated by Forbes magazine, hinges on his standing with consumers. Woods ranked as the world’s fourth-highest paid celebrity in the 12 months through June 30, the magazine said. In October, he became the first athlete to top $1 billion in career earnings.
Woods posted a statement on his Web site on Dec. 2 saying he let his family down with “transgressions” and hasn’t been true to his “family values.” He didn’t address reports of infidelity that appeared in media including US Weekly magazine.
“If I was one of the advertisers who had Tiger as my pitchman I might want to rest it for a while until this stuff blows over,” said Gary Carr, director of national broadcast at TargetCast tcm, a New York-based media buyer.
Sponsor Support
Fifteen different advertisements featuring Woods have appeared during prime time since the beginning of June, according to Nielsen. Those included spots for Gillette, Accenture, Electronic Arts and the PGA. Most had stopped running prior to Woods’s accident as the PGA golf season wound down. A Gillette ad that also included baseball player Derek Jeter was still running, according to Nielsen.
Following the car accident, Woods withdrew from last weekend’s Chevron World Challenge on NBC, an event he has hosted since 1999 to benefit his charitable foundation. Other than an announcement of his absence by TV host Dan Hicks, there was no other mention and the network didn’t air any ads featuring Woods in two days of coverage, according to the New York Post.
Most marketers said they haven’t withdrawn any ads. Gillette is running its media schedule as planned and no Tiger Woods ads have been pulled, said Mike Norton, a company spokesman. He wouldn’t comment on the frequency of the ads.
Nike’s golf division isn’t changing its advertising plans, Beth Gast, a spokeswoman for the Beaverton, Oregon-based company, said in an e-mail. Electronic Arts wasn’t running any Woods ads and hasn’t changed its marketing, said David Tinson, a spokesman for the Redwood City, California-based video-game publisher.
Behavior Clause
Lisa Gordon-Miller, a spokeswoman for Dublin-based Accenture, had no immediate comment.
Woods’s relationships with corporate sponsors may hinge on factors including their duration, his importance to the brands, the target audience and how much money is at stake, according to attorneys experienced in celebrity contract enforcement.
While contracts typically contain behavior clauses, terminations for morality are rare, said Douglas Wood, a partner in the New York office of Pittsburgh-based Reed Smith LLP and general counsel to the Association of National Advertisers.
“It has to be pretty bad, where the artist is someone who has fallen pretty far,” Wood said yesterday in a phone interview.
The attorney, who has had no involvement with the golfer’s endorsements, said he doubted sponsors such as Gillette and Nike would rush to end their contracts.
Oprah to Julia
Before the reports, Woods ranked just below Oprah Winfrey and above Bill Cosby on the Davie Brown Index, which tracks 2,800 celebrities. Now he is between actress Julia Roberts and former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. The index was created by Los Angeles-based Davie Brown Entertainment to provide a way to measure the use of celebrities in campaigns.
The decline in marketability may be temporary, said Chris Anderson, a spokesman for the index.
“This type of swing is caused by major events -- winning the Super Bowl MVP Award or, as with this case, an intense personal crisis,” Anderson said in an e-mail. “Typically, over time, the scores settle back.”
Woods is the best-known active athlete, based on a September study by Marketing Evaluations, a Manhasset, New York- based research company that publishes the Q score, ranking entertainers by their appeal to consumers.
Among U.S. consumers over the age of 6, 86 percent recognized the golfer, with 28 percent saying Woods was one of their favorite personalities, giving him a +28 Q Score.
Q Score
The average celebrity is recognized by 32 percent of the U.S. general population and has a +17 Q rating, according to Henry Schafer, the company’s executive vice president.
The company plans to conduct another survey at the end of January, Schafer said.
“We don’t like to take measurements immediately after any negative social incident,” Schafer said. “We want the consumer to digest things as much as possible.”
While Woods’s popularity may be down, visits to golf.com, owned by Time Warner Inc.’s Sports Illustrated, have more than quadrupled, according to Scott Novak, a Sports Illustrated spokesman.
To contact the reporters on this story: Brett Pulley in New York at bpulley@bloomberg.net; Michael Buteau in Atlanta at mbuteau@bloomberg.net.