Wednesday, April 14, 2010

I am more prone to be inquisitive…

A few days ago we posted a new Nike commercial to our Facebook page. It’s the one where they spliced together Tiger Woods’ dad’s voice to make out like he’s fussin' Tiger for his recent bad behavior.

Did we mention Tiger's dad, Earl, is deceased?

Yes, creepy is right.

But, real quick, here’s a little background (scoured from across the internet) relevant to today’s blog:

Nike entered the golf industry in 1986 with a line of golf shoes. In 1995, then 20 year old Tiger Woods was signed to a 20-year, $40 million endorsement deal. At that time, Nike’s golf-related sales were reportedly $120 million. In 1998, Nike Golf was established and the company’s line of golf products was expanded to include equipment, apparel and balls. By 2008, the brand was worth roughly $500 million.

Ok, as we wrote on FB, this is a really interesting commercial. First off, it doesn’t sell the first bit of anything Nike. It’s :28s of Tiger staring into the camera with his dad “talking to him,” and it closes with :02s of the Nike swoosh. True, he’s wearing Nike apparel, but still…

Anyway, here’s our take on it.

As is often said, any publicity is good publicity; so maybe the plan was to capitalize on the negative PR by publicly scolding Tiger and creating a buzz worthy commercial.

That’s the easy one. Our other thought goes like this:

Nike Golf’s brand equity is largely tied to Tiger’s success (hint: look back at those dollar figures above). Many have said that the sport’s popularity increased dramatically when he came on the scene and that it will inevitably fall off if he leaves. Nike has Tiger under contract for another 5 years, which has an endorsement value of $10 million, so Nike needs Tiger golfing almost as bad as golf needs Tiger golfing.

What is a company to do, then?

Maybe the plan was to use Nike’s leverage and ungodly marketing budget to try to reclaim his good name. How?

Make Tiger look a little upset, a little emotional.
Make Earl's comments like those any regular dad would say.
Make Tiger seem a little lost without his dad’s famous guidance.
Make Tiger a little bit human.

Sadly, we can't really say what Nike was thinking. Heck, we may have missed the mark entirely and be absolutely wrong. Whatever the case, this may possibly be the most brilliant commercial ever.

-Sarah, Emogen marketer

2 comments:

  1. I think that now you are starting to think like an art/media critic and marketing agent. Of course we could have a grand discourse about infidelity in sports and its positive and negative effects on company perception and advertising production, but that would just be stuffy and boring....so instead....

    "Tiger, you deserve to have your dads voice jacked up and edited to scold you...you did something stupid and got caught....Nike should make millions off of your image good or bad, so don't whine about it."

    ReplyDelete

 

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