Oh the hew, cry and shock we've shown at being clued into Tiger Woods' lifestyle. Of the many aspects of this that gives one pause, a few additional comments:
1. his arrogance and omnipotence: a thirty-something who's made over a billion dollars. His world is a bubble floated exclusively by and for the people with only one job--service Tiger. Yes Tiger. That's amazing Tiger. You're right Tiger. He goes nowhere, speaks to no one, buys nothing without having first had someone set it up for him.
2. the cocktail waitress and the party planner. We've devolved to the point where celebrity is so all-pervasive that celeb service workers are transacting in the glow themselves. Could anyone have predicted that we'd see headsets and clipboards become status symbols?
3. pro athletes all have groupies. See Claude Raines' 'Casablanca' title quote above. Ever been in the lobby of a hotel where an NBA team is staying? Ever read a rock band tell-all book? Ever read People? The Star?US? Of course we have. But the pious and sanctimonious copy pouring out of mass media is because moral shock is the only handle any of them have been given as a lead to cover the story. Greater minds than mine are required to parse why bottom-feeders like these groupies, like TMZ or Radaronline can assume outrage when their brands are based on their own sleaziness. However, the outrage at Woods is fake and will only last til the audience gets bored with the angle. Because it's not the sex--see Kardashian, Hilton, et al who've used scandal to move up the food chain. It's not marriage--see Bryant, Spitzer. And I don't think it's this great disparity between the 'nice young man' imagery of his branding.
4. talent drain and laziness. The media could find another way to cover this. Woods' handlers could try strategy other than 'he's using this time to work on himself and his family to repair the blah blah blah and we ask you to respect the privacy blah blah blah'.
The surfers and the bouncers who make up the reporting staff at TMZ don't have the ambition or the skills to look for a story. The current methodology is to get in the way of the story--or the SUV on the way out of the club/hospital/barneys. Tiger's management, and given the size of the Woods business, is large, highly paid and has access to anything is stuck on a playbook that's become a reflex for a celebrity in trouble.
A Counter-Intuitive Strategy
Approach the public with the truth. Understand that they viscerally understand the way pro sports and entertainment work. Explain that in the life of a Tiger Woods, these situations are everywhere. That groupies have been part of this world and handlers get paid to smooth it out since people have been famous. That it's not only Woods is behaved scandalously, it's the reporters, PageSix, his fellow players, the networks, the law firms and the management companies.
Woods already lost the Accenture deal because the gap between the 'ideal' and the news was too great. More importantly than any single endorsement deal is that this whole fandango revealed a fatal flaw in the Tiger brand strategy--no authenticity. In the culture where almost everything is plastic, authenticity is the most valuable commodity. The only chance to get some back is to suck it up and face the world with the real story.
What would the lead to the story be then?
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