For celebrities, image management is not easy. The success of choosing sport stars for endorsing brands was, at the very beginning, mostly based on the general value assigned in the society of sports as incarnation of fairness and ethics. What it counts is the fair competition, the effort, the courage to go beyond your limits. Positive associations, a synthesis of the general historical representation of sports, since the old Greek times.
Or, at least, it was the case for a long time. But, shortly, we arrived at the very normal conclusion that these "stars" are as humans as we are, plus the advantage of benefiting of lots of money to be able to get out of unpleasant stories. The popularity of a sport star could extend the popularity of a brand. Or, could operate the opposite transfer, in damaging the general image of a specific product. The role of the constant monitoring from the part of the companies of the level of awareness of the public image of the celebrity is playing an important role in preventing any negative publicity for the brand itself.
In this case, no wonder about the recent decisions from the part of major American and international companies
to rethink, reconsider or stop their collaboration with one of the world's richest sportsman and typical American hero - Tiger Woods. In the last days, the news - mostly the American TV channels as CNN, but not only - were over saturated (again) with news about him. As since the end of the last year, permanently updates about his sex affairs were on the top of the news all over the world. (In fact, I always considered a bit nonsensical this sick interest in the life of celebrities, in countries were their activity is without any direct relevance for the local agenda. What is the point to dedicate one full page of a newspaper in Bosnia about the life of Britney Spears? For example. But this is another issue I will, probably, address in a special dedicated post.)
From the point of view of the communications, at least for the moment, the management work very well. His last Friday
intervention, is interesting as a lesson in this respect. He admit he did wrong - during the 14 minutes 52 seconds intervention he apologized eight times - and harmed its family and wife: "I am deeply sorry for my
irresponsible and selfish behavior I engaged", "I stopped living by the core values that I was taught to believe in", "I hurt my wife, my kids, my mother, my wife's family, my friends, my foundation and kids around the world who admired me". He promised to follow the appropriate therapy and to return to his Buddhist faith, while focusing on the work of his foundation dedicated to education. This focus on learning could suggest that he, as well, have many things to learn as well.
As usual, the media should share a part of responsibility in such cases: "However, my behavior doesn't make it right for the media to follow my two-and-a-half-year-old-daughter to school and report the school's location". But, in fact, this is the share of his public image: he was a media creation and was the favorite of the media in the good times. It is, in a way, normal, to be under the close
scrutiny of the media because he sells. Even when he is guilty of wrongdoing. And, the huge part of responsibility is belonging to him.
He is nor the first, neither the last sport hero to suffer this kind of treatment. In the world of football, these cases are more often and are rising a lots of questions about our representations and sources of authority. Now, the question, after this 14 minutes 52 seconds of apology, is if he will be able to keep his promises or will act similary again. A question as hard to answer as the one regarding his return in the game of the world competitions.
In the same time, whatever important is the image support of the celebrities, the brands - today maybe more than even - should communicate more than sensations and feelings. If the aim is to project a long-term image, the brand administrators should think of the whole concept of the notion incarnated by the brand: the messages and their endurance, the insertion into the social network, the permanent need to monitor constantly the feed-back from the part of the consumers - generically called "consumers"; in fact, it could be about normal buyers or voters.
Image via Wikipedia
