Call it what you want. Call it spinning. Call it baring his soul. Call it dancing. But please don’t call it PR. Our industry doesn’t need any help smearing its image.
Tiger Woods is to PR what Michael Vick is to veterinary medicine. There is no connection.
Tiger is a phenomenal golfer. And based on his admission today, he is a terrible husband. But he is not a public relations professional and this was not a public relations move. This was a guy protecting his livelihood.
And if you insist on calling it PR, at least have the decency to label it as bad PR, much the way Enron’s ex-CFO Andrew Fastow practiced “bad accounting” and landed in a U.S. jail for 10 years.
Any communications professional worth his or her salt will tell you that Tiger waited WAY TOO LONG to talk. And now that he finally did speak out – conducting a one-way “media conference” – we can also tell you that he accomplished nothing. As a result, when Tiger finally does make his way back onto a golf course, fully expect an exceptionally brutal and slightly uncomfortable reception from fans and media alike. I believe this goes to one of Buddha’s Four Noble Truths:
Samudaya: There is a cause for suffering.
I truly hope that Tiger gets his life together. I hope he can prove himself to be a worthy husband, father and son. And I hope he finds his way back to the golf course and still has his game.
I also hope everyone realizes this is not PR.