Tiger Woods screwed up and now, like flies on regurgitated honeydew, public relations experts are flocking to the media to explain how they would have helped him handle the situation much more effectively. (I’d link to some, but just Google “Tiger Woods PR fail” and you’ll get the gist.)
Most of the Monday morning quarterbacking centers on the notion that Tiger should have spoken out immediately after his post-Thanksgiving adventure became public. You have to respond quickly to a crisis – within three hours! Within 12 hours! For God’s sake at the very least within 24 hours!
But, realistically, what would that have accomplished? This “crisis” wasn’t a public health emergency or a national security issue. It was a spicy domestic dispute. It’s one thing to protect your personal brand; it’s another to hyperventilate and pretend your brand has any real effect on people’s lives.
If Tiger had said, “I’ve had extra-marital affairs over the last few years. My wife and I argued about them late Thanksgiving evening. She came after my car with a golf club and I hit a tree,” would the media frenzy have abated?
Hell and no.
Revealing “transgressions” last Friday or Saturday would have simply relieved gossip outlets of the burden of proving their allegations and allowed them to focus all their attention on digging up potential flings.
In a way, slow-walking the story allowed Tiger to salvage some sense of decency by deflecting allegations about his wife. He has continued to claim that she didn’t bash in the windows on his Cadillac and chase him down the street with a golf club (wink wink). If he had immediately linked the accident to the affairs, the thin string of plausibility holding that story together would have disintegrated.
Now, the experts will be telling Tiger to do a sit-down with Oprah or Robin Roberts or some other serious-but-sympathetic media type to discuss the deep sorrow in his heart. He should resist that advice.
Tiger’s right that “personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn’t have to mean public confessions.” We get too much overwrought apologizing and dashes to rehab from public figures these days. Your response to an extra-marital affair should be dictated by your spouse, not by TMZ or image managers.
Tiger does need to ensure that he doesn’t come off as self-righteous or paint himself as a victim of media hit squads. He’s skating on thin ice when he talks about “deep principle[s] at stake” in keeping the matter private. His principles aren’t worth much these days.
It’s enough to simply say that he did something wrong, he’s dealing with it with his wife, and he’ll redouble his efforts to be an effective representative of the game of golf and his corporate partners going forward.
Beyond that, he should just zip it.
