Celebrity Endorsers -- Quick Gains for Awareness, Large Reputational Risk You Don't Control

This just in....celebrity endorsers are a risky marketing strategy. It certainly works. Tiger Woods as your spokesman was a sure way to gain awareness. But guess what? All celebrities are human, and this past week only reinforces this. It can be a good strategy, but have a plan when your spokesman beats his wife or crashes his car after a bender in Vegas.

It can be risky to place the reputation of your company in the brand of a celebrity. You can't control their actions and that is a direct risk to your business. I prefer to control as many of the risk factors that are controlable. Some aren't controlable. But your company's reputation should be.

Its not a surprise that Pepsico would make this move, especially because the product wasn't that good and I suspect wasn't selling to projections.

PepsiCo Drops Tiger Woods Drink

By COREY DADE

PepsiCo Inc. is dropping a Gatorade drink named after Tiger Woods from its lineup, and television ads featuring the golfer haven't been aired since a storm of publicity erupted over his car accident last month and subsequent revelations about alleged extramarital affairs.

Mr. Woods has been at the center of a media frenzy since he crashed his Cadillac Escalade outside his Florida home Nov. 27, setting off a chain of events that has opened his personal life to scrutiny and led him to admit unspecified "transgressions." For nearly two weeks, news media have continued to closely monitor Mr. Woods and the comings and going of his family.

On Tuesday, Mr. Woods's mother-in-law was treated for stomach pains at an Orlando-area hospital and released. Barbro Holmberg, the mother of the golfer's wife, Elin Nordegren Woods, is staying with the Woodses during a visit from her native Sweden.

A second 911 call in less than two weeks comes from the home of Tiger Woods. The golf superstar's mother-in-law was admitted to the hospital for stomach pains and has been treated and released. Video courtesy of Fox News.

Golfing great Tiger Woods is turning his back on the media, now clamoring for information about his car crash and alleged affairs. It could be a very bad move, according to the News Hub panel.

PepsiCo said Tuesday the move to drop its Gatorade Tiger Focus sports drink is part of a broader overhaul of its Gatorade brand that has been in the works for months, and isn't connected with Mr. Woods's recent troubles.

Advertisers haven't aired TV commercials featuring Mr. Woods since shortly after the scandal broke, according to monitoring data from Nielsen Co., which scans the prime-time, evening news, late-night and sports telecasts on major broadcast networks and 19 cable networks. The Golf Channel isn't included in Nielsen's tracking.

Most recently, Gillette ran a 30-second TV spot including Mr. Woods on Nov. 29, Nielsen said. That ad, which also features baseball player Derek Jeter and tennis player Roger Federer, aired eight times in November. It was the only ad including Mr. Woods that Nielsen recorded during the month, said Aaron Lewis, a spokesman at Nielsen.

It isn't clear what, if any, other commercials featuring Mr. Woods might have been in the works or slated for broadcast at the time of the accident.

Gillette, a unit of Procter & Gamble, hasn't pulled any ads, said Michael Norton, a Gillette spokesman. "We are running our media schedule as planned," Mr. Norton said. He said Gillette has one ad in rotation that includes Mr. Woods, and that he doesn't know when it is scheduled to return to the air. "We haven't made any changes at this time to our marketing strategy," he added.

PepsiCo said it is discontinuing Gatorade Tiger Focus and some other Gatorade drinks to make room for a new lineup of products focused on athletes and sports performance. A company spokesman said the new offerings will be released soon, but declined to provide specifics.

"We decided several months ago to discontinue Gatorade Tiger Focus, along with some other products to make room for our planned series of innovative products in 2010," Gatorade spokeswoman Jennifer Schmit said in an e-mailed statement.

Gatorade Tiger Focus hasn't been a strong performer; volume in the first 10 months of this year was down 34% from a year earlier, according to Beverage Digest, an industry publication and data service. Tiger Focus accounts for about 4% of overall Gatorade volume, Beverage Digest said.

Ads and promotional matter featuring Mr. Woods continued to run on sponsors' Web sites Tuesday. A section on the Nike Inc. Golf site dedicated to Mr. Woods continued to display Web videos featuring the golfer, as well as his line of apparel, balls and golf clubs. "Being the best takes dedication, patience and insight. For Tiger Woods, these are the pillars of his approach," the site read.

Representatives of Nike, Gillette, Electronic Arts and laser-eye surgery chain TLC Vision Corp. said Tuesday that their sponsor relationships with Mr. Woods hadn't changed. TLC Vision continued to feature Mr. Woods prominently on the homepage of its Web site.

Among other companies with which the golfer has endorsement deals, jet-rental company NetJets said in a statement Monday that it continued to support Mr. Woods. Sports-collectible retailer Upper Deck and phone giant AT&T declined to comment. Consulting firm Accenture and watch maker Tag Heuer, a unit LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, couldn't be reached for comment.