Death of a Salesman- Tiger Woods

Oh Tiger, what are you doing, man?

Tiger makes $100 million or more per year from endorsements - more the result of his personal brand than his golf swing. His brand transcends the sport. He is the Natural, and he gives youth to a sport that skews old in its demos. His squeaky clean image made him a no-brainer for marketers and ad agencies.

None of this really changed when he smashed his car driving down a residential streer he'd driven hundreds of times before or even because there was something fishy about the whole incident; it changed becasue he stonewalled.

In an era of social media, the table-stakes of branding are honesty, openness, and transparency. We all knew something happened, and we knew brand woods should talk about it, explain it, let us forgive him for it. And we probably would have forgiven him, but now we can't even consider that without smirking and thinking of him as fodder for Latterman's top 10 and tabloid headlines about "the back nine."

I'm not sure why a big brand like Tiger didn't have better brand management. Tiger didn't say anything for a few days and then blogged, "This is a private matter and i want to keep it that way.Although i understand there is curiosity, the many false, unfounded and malicious rumors that are currently circulating about my family and me are irresponsible."

Tiger woods was the number one source of traffic to news sites in December, according to New York research firm.

Today, branding is about two-way loyalty; a consumer has a right to ask, "How will you show loyalty to me? I think the public would hae forgiven tiger's transgressions, but i don't think the public will completely forgive him for not voluntarily coming clean... for Tiger not showing loyalty back to his fan base.

Will he rebound?

Twitter SMS Arrives in India via Airtel.

If you are in India and an Airtel customer, the good news is that you can now send updates to your Twitter account from the mobile phone itself via SMS.

If you are not using an Airtel connection, there’s no reason to worry as the Twitter-Airtel deal is not exclusive and will probably end after a month. Here’s the official word:

"Twitter will be available in India on SMS only on the Airtel network. There is exclusivity for the same for 4 weeks, in which only Airtel consumers will be able to use the service on SMS across the nation. This period of exclusivity is something that we want to take advantage of and make sure that Brand Airtel can own the property Twitter in consumer mind space."

You save money because you don’t have to send an international SMS for using Twitter but the service is still expensive. Twitter doesn’t charge anything for sending updates but you’ll have to pay a buck to Airtel for every tweet that you send from the phone.

To stop getting Twitter updates on your mobile phone, just send OFF, STOP, or QUIT command from your mobile phone to 53000 or use “ON” to start again.