Dead Tree Media - Traditional Advertising Reviewed by an Internet Marketer » Tiger Woods

New Nike Golf Tiger Woods ad is powerful yet freaky

Jeff Ferguson — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 01:59:10 +0000

So, this happened today…

Earl Woods, Tiger’s dad, died on May 3, 2006. All the hot sex news from Tiger has happened over the past 5 or 6 months… at least, that’s how long the shit has been in the news. That means that, most likely, these powerful, powerful words are not, in fact, about all that funky hot sex with various porn stars and assorted wait staff.

For all you know, Earl is talking about ordering the fish over the steak on the plane ride home from The Masters one year. So, before you even let the words, “wow, it’s like he was talking about…” Nope, no he wasn’t… it probably wasn’t that at all.

This isn’t like Babe Ruth calling his shot or some d-bag guessing that Michael Jackson was going to die in six months. This was someone talking about something completely friggin’ different, who eventually got into some trouble with his dick.

Just sayin’, calm down and get back to playing (watching) golf.

GM Drops Tiger Woods, Again

Jeff Ferguson — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:15:33 +0000

Real quick… So, apparently Tiger’s contract with GM was up in 2008, but some reason they decided they needed to really, really drop him here in 2010 to make a point (WWTDD link). You know what? GM, with the whole bail out thing and the inability to hold onto a head of the company, how about you focus on your game for a bit and not worry about an endorsement deal from 2008?

WSJ (wha?) rates the best and worst advertising of 2009

Jeff Ferguson — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:56:15 +0000

Dead Tree Media just arrived on the scene, so we’re not going to do a “Best of 2009″ edition. Partly because it would be presumptuous, but mostly because it sounds like work. But that won’t stop us from linking to a few Best Of’s to fill in some dead space on the site.

Wall Street Journal, one of the old ladies of the Dead Trees, posted its list of the Best and Worst Ads of 2009 (link). It’s a fairly decent review of the year for sure. I can’t agree with them on some of the non-dead tree winners (the skating babies thing was cute, but it was a novelty at best). but overall it’s a decent read.

The one I’m having a little problem with was giving Accenture the red ass for its Tiger Woods campaign simply because it had Tiger Woods in it now. Turns out that campaign has been running for over six years and nobody seemed to have a problem with it until we found out that Tiger was a bigger hit with the ladies that we would have guessed. I mean, you could have given it a “worst” rating because the ads are kind of poorly written and unimaginative, but to say they are suddenly bad because of Tiger, that’s just lazy.

I won’t tolerate laziness on this site and… what? Oh I led with lazy. Shit, never mind…

One of Tiger’s girls cashes in with some Dead Tree Media for BidHere.com

Jeff Ferguson — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:21:30 +0000

Oh wow, where to start… check out this piece of work from Tiger girl number, um… oh hell, I can’t remember where she showed up. I know she was the waitress he nailed the day his day died (classy!).

What’s so great about this is not just that she’s cashing in on her 15 minutes, but that the commercial is oh so VERY BAD! I mean, she’s clearly reading her lines off the monitor and she’s delivering them like a damned robot. I love near the end of it when she’s talking about all the items available and she gets to “hair straighteners” and has the sudden realization that she should touch her hair to really tie it all together.

Perfect.

The only way she could have delivered this any better is if she did it from atop a stripper pole, the classy dame.

My big question with all of Tiger’s chicks these days is, who didn’t make the cut? Did you skip the other waitress with the lazy eye? I mean, dude, you’ve got more money than some minor sultans and this is the tail you’re pulling? With all the money you have, I’m pretty sure you could get a woman created from scratch and you’re throwing it into waitresses?

Let me just say it… dude, seriously.

Guest Post: Accenture proves that the best jokes are accidental…

Jeff Ferguson — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:00:37 +0000

Today we have the first in a series of guest posts here at Dead Tree Media, this time by Steve Sarner of Tagged (link).

* * *

It’s been over 2 weeks since his solo car crash and the Tiger jokes are already getting old as is the debate about corporate endorsements and whether to maintain or drop celebrities who get in trouble.

That said – the Accenture / Tiger Woods poster ads that blanket nearly every airport in the nation now lend themselves to some special ad copy irony – such as:

“It’s not a setback. It’s a test.”

“High performers shine, even when the sun doesn’t.”

“How can you plan ahead when you can hardly see ahead?”

And since Accenture is likely frantically working with the vendors to remove / replace these displays – there’s no better place than Dead Tree to archive this one from MSP. The ad copy – “Opportunity isn’t always obvious” -combined with the phallic cactus photo offers perhaps the most ironic Tiger ad of all.

About Steve Sarner:

Steve has more to lose than me submitting for Dead Tree because although he used to be on the “buy side” like me – today he sells digital media and that means he might actually have to face some of these clients or agency types that might want to switch from dead to digital. I’ve known Steve since my Kimberly-Clark days and over the years he has a pretty good record of joining start ups that are successful enough to be bought out by larger companies. He’s also worked for “Big Media” such as News Corp and Fox Digital but today is back in the start-up mode in San Francisco with a successful – not so little – social media site called Tagged (link) where he runs the revenue production. And like me – Steve is a consumer and part of the target audience for many ads. Unlike me he avoids automobile commutes as much as he avoids bad dead tree advertising.

All of Tiger Wood’s dead tree friends are running for the hills…

Jeff Ferguson — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 18:01:05 +0000

I awoke from my beer induced haze this morning to see the AP headline, “Gillette to limit Woods’ role in its marketing” (link) and even with some of the alcohol rolling around in my body, I said to myself, “well that took longer than I thought it would.” Not just for the sponsors to start running for the hills, but also, Tiger should have outed himself as a fuck up a long time ago.

A friend of mine, who dated some pro athletes awhile back, was asked what she thought of all this back when it first started coming out. She replied, “well, I know professional athletes, so none of this is surprising.”

I think we were initially surprised that it was Tiger pulling this shit because it was golf, and golf is boring as hell… and I play the damn game. I always thought Tiger a little boring, a little too perfect. I like my golfers like John Daly used to be, drunk, drugged up, fat, and crazy as hell. What’s ironic is that this train wreck, who used to take out a fifth of Jack every day for awhile there, is chiming in with advice on how Tiger should save his marriage (link). Man, when John Daly is giving you marriage advice, you have officially hit rock bottom.

Dead Tree advertisers love themselves a big ole’ star to hook themselves onto; however, they also tend to run like scared little children when that hero’s true colors come out and they fuck up in a grand fashion, like our friend Tiger Woods truly has been lately. But man that took awhile… huh. Maybe if Tiger got himself a drug habit or worse (gasp!) a homosexual lover, then they would have dropped him faster than Lindsey Lohan can drop a fifth of vodka. Apparently a dozen or so extramarital trysts don’t really shake them up too much. Hell, they guys that run these companies are probably calling to welcome him to the club.

I saw on Mashable yesterday that Accenture starting pulling him out of the picture (link). I was walking through DFW earlier this week, and in the American terminal they have this big interactive, touch screen where you can get news, weather, and whatnot, all sponsored by Accenture. I look up and see that Tiger had his own tab on the screen and touched it fully expecting a collection of news articles about all the craziness lately. Instead, it’s a collection of puff pieces and videos about his humble beginnings and I was suddenly reminded that Accenture was yet someone else that was in bed with Tiger.

So here goes Gillette, Accenture 86’d him yesterday, AT&T realized it sponsored a golf tournament with the guy and freaked right the fuck out (link), and Gatorade made some wussy statement about their involvement with him changing… apparently they were already planning on phasing him out (link). Nothing personal Tiger, best of luck with the marriage thing.

Wait a minute, now I see what’s done it… that’s right, Tiger is getting out of golf for awhile (link). “Tiger, we were cool with you fucking your way through every big busted blonde you can find, but you do have to keep playing golf to get our advertising dollar.”

Keep is classy, Dead Tree Media, keep it classy…