Earl Woods Questions His Son From The Grave

I wrote the following response to Justin Spohn's great post criticizing Nike for playing it safe.

"Let’s be frank here. If Nike were to get super creative, it would draw attention to the issue even more. Some of the most powerful Jordan spots were not super creative, almost corny and hackneyed, but by george, they managed to stir the emotions.

I commented earlier today on someone expecting the players Nike aligns itself with to be paragons of marital fidelity. I didn’t realize that was part of the Nike sponsorship criteria. Michael Jordan was no saint, but I think it’s safe to say that investing in “his airness” was not a bad business move for Nike.

Tiger is a golfer. Sure he is a role model, but he never set out to become the moral gold standard for which we should all should use to live our lives. Sure his actions were reprehensible, but, none more so than the pope turning a blind eye/covering up the offenses of child abusers within his ranks. The difference is, the Holy Father bases his existence on living by example – Tiger did what pretty much all professional sportsmen do – but became a pariah for it – at least until he wins his next major.

Perhaps when he was on the fence about having several of his affairs he could hear the subtle whisper in his head — “just do it” "




Hat Tip: Dean McBeth

A Tiger’s Tale: Road to Redemption

It’s old news now, but Eldrick “Tiger” Woods, the squeakiest of the squeaky clean sports stars, has been outed as a serial philanderer. The Twittersphere and the tabloids have done a pretty good job of documenting Tiger’s indiscretions, the details of which need not be revisited here.

The question I’m more interested in is a little harder to answer - What damage has Tiger Woods, the man done to the Tiger Woods, the brand?

First thing’s first - Tiger will return to golf. He will better than ever. He will break Jack Nicklaus’s record for the most Major wins. This much is certain.

But far murkier is how Tiger’s tale will evolve from this point. Will his wife leave him? Is he a toxic asset that sponsors must drop? How will golf fare in his absence?

Accenture has already pulled the plug, Procter & Gamble have “benched” him by limiting his presence in Gillette ads. Tag Heuer has announced they will continue supporting Tiger after initially signalling they would sever ties with the troubled superstar.

But Tiger’s most important booster is the swoosh factory – and Nike is sticking with their man. Founder Phil Knight recently observed, “When his career is over, you'll look back on these indiscretions as a minor blip.”

Tiger - The Brand
With some sponsors leaving and others holding firm, no one has a crystal ball telling us whether Tiger’s stock is buy, hold or sell. While most think his brand image will slowly rise from rock bottom, few believe it will ever climb back to the stratospheric heights it once lived.

One thing is certain, Woods’s actions have made his brand infinitely more vulnerable than the virtuous juggernaut it seemed only a couple of months ago. Perhaps his self-described “transgressions,” made us realize is human after all. As it might be expected, the immediate damage to his market value was significant. University of California, Davis economists Christopher Knittel and Victor Stango have estimated the financial fallout of Tiger's scandals to have cost his sponsors between US$5-12 billion in wealth.

While it's hardly comforting right now, his sponsors can be optimistic that the outing of his inner lothario have added a whole new dimension to Tiger's brand. In the final telling of Tiger's story, the silver lining of this moment is that practically all revered heroes in history face daunting challenges at some point, but most come out intact. Let’s face it, stories aren’t very interesting when it’s all smooth sailing.

Legendary mythologist Joseph Campbell believes that such adversity is a recurring theme in every great story in history. In his famous book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell formulated the idea of “ The Hero’s Journey” or “Monomyth” - a narrative framework that transcends time, place and culture. George Lucas famously used the monomyth as a template for writing the Star Wars saga.

A quick glance at the cycle quickly reveals how it relates to Tiger’s travails. Some of the stages, appropriately named, “the road of trials” and the “woman as temptress” have landed Tiger firmly in “the abyss”. But as Campbell writes, “It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”

The reason for the abyss stage is simple - while not all protagonists in mythological tales are human, the audiences who read them are. In order to relate to the hero, we must be able to empathise with their experiences. It’s pretty hard to empathise with a flawless robot. To err is human after all.

From Tiger’s perspective, his short hiatus from the game has already put him on the road to redemption - at least with the fans and sponsors - no one knows how atonement will go for on the home front. But time is a powerful healer, and before long Tiger will have mended fences and be back swinging clubs and spruiking products like never before. The only thing Americans love more than a fall from grace is a comeback of Lazarus proportions – just ask Robert Downey Jnr.

Like Michael Jordan before him, Tiger Woods is one of those rare figures that transcends his sport, his race and his nationality. His marketability is based on the certainty of outcome – he will win, and he’ll look good doing it. So sure, the facade of the bulletproof boyscout has been shattered. But for Tiger, perhaps his own “hero’s journey” may not be a such a myth after all.


To read about another recent tale of redemption, see Gunther Sonnenfeld's great post on Michael Vick.

The Childhood Development of Mastery

Last month I wrote a post about Geoff Colvin’s Talent is Overrated. The book describes the process of deliberate practice -- the focused repetition of a skill that, if done for long enough, leads to mastery.

Particularly powerful was Colvin’s dispelling of the wunderkind myth. For years it was assumed that world-class performers succeeded because of their pre-ordained greatness. Not so, says Colvin who cites several examples of child prodigies committing at least ten years to deliberate practice before achieving true excellence. In other words, the sublime compositions of Mozart or the golfing genius of Tiger Woods were achieved only after honing their crafts longer and harder than the rest of us.

With a little one on the way in August, my wife is not thrilled with my grand plans of teaching our bub golf or tennis before she can talk. After all, tales abound of aspiring talents burning out early because of parental pressure -- even the pushiest parent can not make up for a lack of intrinsic motivation. To achieve world class performance, practice must be something the child wants to do. As tennis great Bjorn Borg famously said, “You have to find it, no one else can find it for you.”

So what is a parent to do? How does a mother and father team provide the optimum home environment for childhood development? The answer Colvin writes is twofold. Citing a University of Chicago Study led by well-known creativity expert Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Colvin tells us parental encouragement must be both stimulating and supportive. The image above is a visual representation of Colvin’s statement:
“Adolescents living in three of those combinations reported the typical low-interest, low-energy experience of studying. But in the fourth combination, the environment was both stimulating and supportive, students were much more engaged, attentive and alert in their studying.”

Parents providing a supportive and stimulating environment can help nurture a child’s curiosity, enthusiasm and success in any field of endeavor. This ongoing stimulation and support is often the secret behind high achievers’ expertise in their chosen field.

Sounds good in theory -- we’ll see how it goes in practice come August!

Michael Jordan "Maybe"

My favorite ever Michael Jordan commercial.

Jordan was the first athlete of the modern era to truly transcend his sport, paving the way for modern greats like Tiger Woods and LeBron James. This ad is a beautiful reminder that Jordan's genius was a product of elbow grease and determination rather than the talent and flair he became famous for.