Eye on the Tiger

I hate golf. The snail's pace, the early morning tee times, the business-shmooze aspect, the historically all-white-male club culture, the lumpy terrain and buzz-cut grass. I'm the freak who actually drove down 17 Mile Drive bitching about how the golf courses had ruined the landscape. If Jack Bauer were to torture me, I could probably name five golfers: Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Nancy Lopez and Tiger Woods. Ooops, that's four. No, Jack, please, not the electrodes! But as much as golf to me is the television equivalent of Ambien, I admit I've been following the saga of Tiger's wood. It's been a welcome diversion from the Healthcare Bill. Besides, my husband is in control of the remote at all times, so it's not like I can avoid the Tiger tales.

So now, right during Augusta, Nike has put out an instantly infamous spot (No, I will not provide a link. If you are that out of it, you probably don't care). The video is a single shot of Tiger, looking sheepish. The audio is an old clip of his father lecturing him, seemingly from beyond the grave, and asking if "he learned anything."

Well, let's see. What could Tiger have learned?

Don't send incriminating text messages?
Never piss off a female Viking?
Keep it in your pants unless it's time to shower, pee, or have sex with your beautiful, blonde wife?

How about keep it in your pants long enough and you will start hallucinating that your dead father is talking to you? Tiger is almost 34 years old. A grown man with two children of his own who is way past getting lectured by Daddy, even if the old man is yelling at him from a cloud. The spot attempts to strike a "boys will be boys" chord and it works, if that's what you already believe. The wink-wink-nudge-nudge-way-to-go-stud crowd doesn't need to be convinced to keep backing Tiger. The how-dare-you-break-your-marriage-vows-and-publicly-humiliate-your-wife set isn't budging either. Nor is my subset, the people who can't stand phonies and hypocrites. The folks who didn't give a fig about Tiger's private life before, during or after the scandal still don't care. About the only people who could possibly change their opinion are those who believe Tiger is a "sex addict" who can be cured through therapy. And in fact, if he were to carry around a recording of his dead father's voice and play it every time his, uh, club wanted to swing, it would probably be a pretty effective "cure". Nice implants, Brandy, hold on while I switch on this tape of my Dad...

We had a long and spirited online discussion about this spot in one of my linked in writer's groups. People thought it was brilliant, stupid, creepy, clever, tacky, classy – it was a concerto of opinions. Some speculated that the spot was written by a 22 year old, an age bracket that can still wilt before a disapproving Dad. Others suggested that people who speculate about the copywriter's age are embittered old has-beens. One old school (as in strategic) copywriter posted the following questions:

what does that spot sell?
who's its target audience?
what's the expected take-away?
what benefit might it have for the brand?
why should people care?

I couldn't answer any of them.

I posted the spot on facebook, in a message addressed to my advertising friends. To my surprise, it's the non-advertising people who started commenting. The thread went on and on, and a lot of strangers chimed in. All the comments were about Woods' character, or lack thereof. Tiger was a slimeball. A great athlete with a right to a private life. A sick man in need of therapy. A vulnerable human being exposed to constant temptation. The spot was long-forgotten, it was all about Tiger.

And that's the thinking behind that Nike commercial: it keeps people talking about Tiger. Once Nike decided not to drop him, they couldn't pass up a buy like the Augusta telecast. To do a heroic great golfer spot would have been goofy – we all know what he's been up to the past few months. All that rehab, groveling, meeting with attorneys and cold showers three times daily. There was no ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room, not to mention his wayward trunk.

Nike has a stellar advertising history, but any spot featuring Tiger the athlete would inevitably be about Tiger the womanizer. So they made a brilliantly simple spot that could be instantly deconstructed and spoofed on You Tube, with the parodies spreading like H1N1, all across the social media universe. Within the first 24 hours, somebody had already done a version with new audio featuring Tiger's infamous voicemail to...whatever her name was (sorry, I left my Enquirer in the bathroom).

As an old school strategic type myself, I too tried to understand the messaging, the goal, the benefit to the brand. It's all beside the point. The spot is a clean slate - you can stick on a new voiceover, slap on some color supers, guaranteed to pop against that black and white film, add some porno chickaboom boom background music – the possibilities are endless. As will be the stream of parodies. And the one constant throughout will be the swoosh on Tiger's shirt.