Why Advertisers Aren't Dropping Tiger Woods

(Strictly from a business perspective.)

What's happened for Tiger's sponsors over the last week?

• Bigger audiences.
• More pitch opportunities.
• More buys.

Win.

Bad publicity = Good publicity.

For instance:

• Popular celebrities intentionally seek bad publicity (e.g., most scandalous videos/pics = staged).
• Popular radio hosts intentionally try to anger the masses (e.g., say something offensive, pretend you're serious, attract more people).

It's the cheapest marketing trick in the book with the biggest returns.

You get your brand in front of people who wouldn't otherwise care about you.

Marketing rule ^1: It's a numbers game.

• The more pitches.
• The more buys.
• The more sales.

(A "pitch" for example happens every time a person looks at an ad, or sees a company logo, mentions a name, or hears about the brand, etc., etc.)

The Ingredients

Though Tiger's incident wasn't a publicity stunt, it had the ingredients to make a publicity stunt great:

1. Beyond the realm of ordinary
2. Massive appeal
3. Highly controversial
4. Mysterious (continues the conversation)
5. Relatively innocent

Responsible for 90% of Tiger's earnings, the sponsors saw themselves in the middle of massive free publicity with a much brighter light shining on them.

Tiger's incident will also attract a massive new audience to the PGA Tour when he returns.

The gossip mags/blogs will bring an entirely new audience sector that Tiger and golf couldn't attract.

• Big win for his sponsors.
• Big win for golf.

America loves comeback stories and will forgive you in time.

Tiger and his amazing family will bounce back.

Pub.

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