Tiger Woods in the new Nike ad
Here’s why Nike’s new 30-second advertisement featuring a robotic-looking Tiger Woods and the voice of his late father, Earl, is wrong on so many levels.
Here’s what the late Earl says:
“Tiger, I am more prone to be inquisitive to promote discussion. I want to find out what your thinking was. I want to find out what your feelings are, and did you learn anything?”
And here’s why I think Nike have totally missed the point. The advertisement cements Woods’s reputation as a cold-hearted, self-centered man. It’s not cutting edge. It is pure exploitation.
Sure, Woods has generated hundreds of millions of dollars for Nike since the sporting goods company signed the golfer as a name years ago, but this is no way to resurrect his thoroughly (self) ruined reputation.
It is impossible to ignore what Woods has done. Golf nuts and men have tried to ignore it, but women and all sports fan with a moral compass pointing north can’t. And already the ad has been called creepy. I agree.
Here’s why.
1) Nike and Woods are usng Woods’s dead father. Ewww. Woods clearly has given his OK to use his late father’s voice. Double ewwww.
2) Tiger says nothing in the ad. He merely stares into the camera. The ad reveals nothing and answers none of the questions his late father asks. Tiger Woods doesn’t discuss; he doesn’t say what he was thinking; he doesn’t express his feelings, nor does he reveal if he’s learned a thing. He simply stares – like a cold-hearted robot. Like the cold-hearted millionaire who tipped cheap on his black AmEx card. He lets his dead father do the talking, and that’s cheap, that’s easy, that’s a major cop out.
Tiger Woods with his wife Elin, children and two dogs - the picture perfect family - or is it?
3) Woods has been exposed as a) cheap, b) dirty, c) someone who engages is unprotected sex with many women other than his wife, d) a liar, e) an egoist who continues to play by his own rules even when in rehab – remember the individual cabin? and f) a manipulator – the latest woman to come forward says they had a one-night-stand when she was his teenaged neighbour.
And where did he get up to this behaviour? In the family car and in his office next to the baby’s crib. Eww. Eww. Ewww.
Tiger Woods might be good at golf, and he might prove it at the Masters in Augusta this weekend, but he’s bad at everything else, and he’s already proved that.
