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Introduction

Tiger Woods, a name that does not need much to say. The most successful golf player is not just a sportsman, but also a brand. This human brand has recently been on the headlines for very wrong reasons, such as careless driving and affair scandals.

This case study intends to investigate the case of Tiger Woods scandal that has had intense affect on the brand’s reputation, as its brand identity is being associated with various characteristic caused by the scandal. First section of this paper will cover theoretical understandings of brand equity with emphasis on brand identity and brand association; and brand reputation. The second part will imply the theoretical perspective to the case of Tiger Woods scandal. The reason for studying this particular brand is because it is a recent case and is about a ‘human’ brand which makes it more exciting than corporate brand, as it requires analyses that go beyond the simple theories of branding.

Brand equity is defined as an intangible asset of added value built from four major components; brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand quality and brand associations (Aaker 1996). According to Ferrel and Hartline (2008) brand awareness and brand loyalty tend to enhance consumers’ familiarity with the brand as recognized brands are approached more often by consumers. Brand quality relates to the risks perceived in making purchase decision. Brand associations refer to brand image, functional benefits, and attributes. In addition, according to Aaker brand association is a branch of brand identity where identity refers to ‘what the organization wants the brand to stand for in customer’s mind’ (1996).

Brand association plays an important role in defining brand equity, as associations build customer-based brand equity. According to Lassar, Mittal and Sharma (1995) customer-based brand equity is the driving force for incremental financial gains to the firm. When a brand is identifiable it poses positive customer-based brand equity; thus, if marketing activity of a brand doesn’t grasp response in a favorable manner, negativity exists (Kotler and Keller, 2009). Furthermore, Lassar, Mittal and Sharma (1995) suggest identification and attachment also play a role in enhancing customer-based brand equity, as identifying with a particular brand involves associating with them through emotional attachment. In order to avoid negative brand equity, brand associations need to be prudently maintained as it can add or deduct value from the brand identity that consumers associate themselves to.

Kaynak, Salman and Totaglu (2008) discussed various theoretical perspectives on brand association where Aaker’s (1991) proposed theory of several categorical divisions of brand associations is suggested; this paper will only discuss the category of personality. The role of personality in brand association involves human-like characteristics. Aaker treats the aspect of brand as a person to describe brand personality. According to him ‘brand can be perceived as being upscale, competent, impressive, trustworthy, fun, active, humorous, casual, formal, youthful, or intellectual’ (2002, p.83). Recognizing brand personality can be valuable in several ways. Firstly, it can enable consumers to express their own personality through personality of the brands-creating strong association. Secondly, it creates consumer-brand relationship based on favorable personality traits. Lastly, personality can also provide differentiation and can ‘positively influence perceived quality, brand preference and customer loyalty’ (Maehle and Shneor, 2010).

In addition to Aaker’s concept of brand personality, Keller (1991) suggests a more detailed concept of brand associations which include attributes, benefits and attitudes. Attributes he suggests, has two divisions; product-related and non-product related attributes. Here product-related attributes are attributes that directly relate to functional performance of the product. On the other hand, non-product related attributes include user imagery (who uses the product) and usage imagery (in what situations the product is used). Associations with user and usage imagery are related to demographic characteristics such as age or socioeconomic status and psychographic elements including feelings and experience as a part of psychographic characters. Furthermore, Keller suggests these imageries also create brand personality, which is described similar to Aaker’s description of brand personality.

Benefits, another element of brand association by Keller, include functional and symbolic benefits. Briefly, functional benefits closely relate to product-related attributes where core advantages of products satisfy ‘basic motivations such as solving problems’ (Kayanak, Salman and Tatoglu, 2008). Symbolic benefits play a more important role in brand association as it involves feelings and emotions of consumers. Symbolic benefits provide social approval or self-identity to consumers. When consumers associate with a brand that provides social acceptance or self-concept, they tend built emotional consumer-brand relationship leading to effective brand identity. Lastly, brand attitudes combine all the factors discussed above in order to create attitudinal perception towards brands and become ‘basis for consumer behaviour’ (p.349). Different attributes have different means to consumers, thus, most favorable attributes create stronger associations. This creates significant consumer-brand relationship that gets reflected upon customer-based brand equity.

In order to avoid losing brand equity, it is immensely important to ensure all brand association components discussed above have positive value so consumers can identify brands with an optimistic viewpoint. According to Henrik (2004) managing brand association can be a risky matter; where ‘the most obvious risk is related to control and the loss of control over brand’s identity, core values and associations’. Consequently, it is unfortunate that some brands have lost equity caused by negative brand association that has resulted in tarnishing their overall brand reputation.

Brand Reputation

Chaudhri (2008) defines brand reputation as ‘the overall value, esteem and character of a brand as seen or judged by people in general’. It is vital for brands to build a strong reputation in order to thrive in the eyes of consumers; hence, creating a competent brand identity with positive associations is essential. Element such as personality, attitude and symbolism place more emphasis on involving feelings and emotions of consumers are closely related to structuring brand reputation because these intangible, non-functional components can create enduring memory.

According to Chernatony (1999) there is a strong link between brand identity and brand reputation. Brand identity is influenced by associations which include symbolic function mentioned above. Chernatony realizes the importance of forming symbolic meanings as they help consumers express themselves in a society (p. 169). When consumers’ ‘desired symbolic meanings’ or supposed personality traits are not consistent due to unexpected behaviour of a brand, consumer-brand relationship can be weaken causing a fall in the brand’s reputation (p.169).

In addition, brand personality consists of individual traits that are engraved in the heart of a brand. These traits indirectly track its way in consumers’ memory, thus, creating personal relationships. As it was mentioned earlier, Regarding Aaker’s personality traits, ‘trustworthy’ strongly relates to reputation of a brand. Just like human-human relationships where trust surpasses all other elements needed to have an affectionate relationship, consumer-brand relationship also relies heavily upon trust. For instance, if trust is broken in human-human relationship, respect and reputation is immediately dropped for that human; likewise, brands are treated the same way as humans. Keller (2002) underlines the importance of trust by stating ‘brands are meant to offer consumers the basic expectation of trust’. People place significant personal value on honesty in their lives, therefore brands should also incorporate honesty in their strategies in order to support consumer honesty (p.33). Honesty, trust and sincerity are qualities that can damage brands reputation if not integrated in the process of building brand identity.

There are various causes of damaging reputation that result in losing trust and faith in brands, Greyser (2009) poses several sources for tarnishing brand reputation. Firstly, product failure can cause damaging reputation where brands functional benefits or product related attributes do not meet consumers’ demands. Secondly, social responsibility gap can inject immorality or unreliability on symbolic meanings of the brand. Lastly, misbehavior and controversy/scandal of spokesperson or corporation itself can jeopardize brands’ identity by labeling brands’ personality as dishonest, untrustworthy or obtuse. There are other causes such as poor business results or controversial ownership that can cause negative brand associations influencing brand reputation. Nonetheless, they all require brands to constantly maintain brand identity and shield their brands from any external source that can damage their reputation. This includes the possibility of brands being exposed of or falsely accused of acting irresponsibly by the media.

Media is a communication means that is employed by corporations to get exposure in the market and gain brand recognition. Media facilitates in providing information about corporations and their brands to the public. However, the media is also known for gaining its own recognition by sharing personal or false information about brands-this is known as negative media coverage. Though this may divert attention to those brands in a manner of gaining publicity, it can also destruct reputation of a well-standing brand. Deephouse (2000) provides in-depth study of media reputation where he defines it as ‘the overall Assessment of a firm presented in the media’ (p.1099). The role of media is to provide information and this information appears from various sources. The study proposes three main sources of information; company press releases, stakeholders and media workers (p.1097).This paper will only discuss the media workers as a source of information.

Media workers are the most interesting source of information on brands, as these workers share information that come from their own personal judgments and these judgments are not always positive. Media workers can create extremely interesting publications that would be highly appreciated by its audience, however, whether the information is genuine or not, it is not always in favor of the brands or corporations they expose. This source of media information has caused ultimate damages to reputations of various brands-one of the recent cases is Tiger Woods brand scandal.

Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods, a famous 33 year-old golf player, who is known for being the worlds greatest golf player is now associated with many other activities that have occurred in his private life. Recently (i.e. late November 2009) he was known to have behaved deceiving to his wife by having extramarital affairs with dozens of women who appeared in the media to expose this behaviour of the famous athlete. To inquire on why such behaviour occurred, it was found that he was a sex addict, and was later sent to rehabilitation centre for his treatment. Consequently this agitated his private life, and of course had a major negative affect on his brand.

Tiger Woods, a human brand known for its victories in the field of sports for the past 20 years or so, is now facing great challenges to regain his brand identity. Brands can be corporations, countries or humans, hence, they all require protecting their brand equity-though managing it may be a bit more critical for human brands. The reason human brands are more difficult to manage is because they tend to form closer and more personal consumer-brand relationships; thus, it becomes a burden at times to fulfill consumers’ desires in a consistent manner. Another reason is that human brand identity can be constructed of characters that are not only element of the brand, but also their personal human nature. This makes it difficult for brands to protect its identity by not letting personal lives reflect its brands’ reputation.

Tiger Woods, offers sports entertainment as a primary product, and over-time has gained vast number of loyal consumers (i.e. fans). He gained great brand equity that was contributed by his secondary products such as video games or online clubs and sponsors including Nike, Tag Heuer and AT&T. Consumers identified Tiger Woods with various associations that formed strong consumer-based brand equity. The brand identity consists of several associative factors that are derived from various sources (i.e. core product, personal life) that are directly and indirectly relevant to the brand. This includes attributes related to his products, and non-product related attributes such as personality and symbols.

As discussed above, product-related attributes associate with functional performance of the product, and as Tiger Woods has been achieving victory in its field of sports, consumers associate the brand as a high performance product. Another attribute consumers’ associate is product satisfaction. Tiger Woods brand has been the leader of its market winning championship for over a decade providing utter functional satisfaction to its consumers. Tiger Woods is associated with more characteristics that go beyond its functional benefits; consumers attach their feelings and emotions to this human brand based on various non-product related attributes.

Golf is often considered a sophisticated sport enjoyed by the upper social class, thus, the users of this product (i.e. golf players) associate the brand as upscale and sophisticated as it matches their own identity. That may not be true in all cases, as Tiger Woods offers secondary products such as video games, that do not only target the upper-class, however, the essence of the sport remains non-aggressive and aesthetic (Wann et. al, 2008) giving the impression of sophistication and upscale to the brand’s personality. When consumers attach themselves to a sportsperson, a bond is formed where consumers and brands act as each others support. Psychographic elements here involve feelings and experience of active and competent that consumers obtained from Tiger Woods every time victory is achieved. Consumers that have been involved heavily in consuming brand’s secondary products (i.e. licensed merchandise such as logo shirts, caps etc.) tend to associate the brand with self-esteem and satisfy their ‘needs of affiliation’. Tiger Woods secondary products include his logo shirts and caps and consumers of those products identify themselves with the brands personality, and achieve a sense of self-identity. Tiger Woods online clubs is also a secondary service that consumers become a part of to feel the sense of self-belonging in a specific social group (i.e. golfers).

Apart from brand’s personality traits being competent, upscale and sophisticated, there are factors that are derived from Tiger Woods private life. In this study, this plays an important role. Tiger Woods as a person was known to be a family oriented man, with great dignity and affection as his private life was always seen as a continuing progress. He is a husband, a father, and a son of respectable people. This added to his brands personality as being respectful, trustworthy, and affectionate. His personal human characteristics influenced qualities to the brand personality that consumers now identified with. Tiger Woods is also involved in endorsing brands like Tag Heuer, Nike and Gatorade-these sponsors’ characteristics and Tiger Woods personality go hand in hand, as they both are sophisticated, upscale, active and/or youthful.

Unfortunately, brands are not always blessed to remain with such positive associations. After years of earning a reputable name, the brand got attacked by the media for all the critical reasons.

Media has been an immense supporter for all the positive exposure that Tiger Woods had whether it was his winning championships or marrying an iconic beauty. Media has been there to favor this so called ‘angelic’ human brand by communicating how this brand has grown without any faults in his career or personal life. But, media can be so egocentric at times, as it is also the one to turn all those noble brand characteristics to be censorious for Tiger Woods.

Media cannot be blamed for communicating false information about Tiger Woods, as the human brand was truly involved in extramarital affairs and announced a sex addict. Several media channels were used in revealing brands scandalous act where media workers were the main source of information. Media workers were the ones to investigate the matter and to gather all information to communicate through various channels. These channels include, newspaper articles, sports magazines, online blogs and so on. The information was shared to such a vast audience that it captured attention of several TV show producers. For example, South Park a very well known animated adult comedy show, dedicated an entire episode on Tiger Woods scandals. Such methods of communicating reached more and more audiences on a global scale in an entertaining way. While audiences were enjoying the amusing presentation of the controversy, Tiger Woods brand was miserably sinking its brand equity.

From Greyser’s (2009) list of reputation causes, Tiger Woods ‘misbehaviour’ and ‘scandal’ was the main source to damage brand’s reputation. The brand is not identified as sophisticated, trustworthy, or even active anymore. Consumer-brand relationship is destructed as the ‘trust’ quality from brand’s personality is uncertain due to his misbehaviour. Consumers that gained symbolic benefits by wearing ‘TW’ logo hats may not be doing so anymore, as the logo itself has degrading mocks publicly shared on the internet and markets. Members of online TW club may not want to belong to it as they may fear that brand’s damaged identity may point towards them in the societies. Tiger Woods may now be associated with characters like dishonest, deceptive, disgraceful, and not-so-upscale due to his behaviour in his private life that instantly got reflected on the brands image. Consumer-brand relationship is now trembled putting brands equity at stake.

Tiger Woods is known to be the wealthiest athlete, earning an average of $110 million per year where $10,413,163 in 2009 was solely from his career (databasegolf.com). Tiger Woods earns heaps from its sponsors; however, this source of income has reduced due the brands tarnished reputation. The scandal did not only jeopardize Tiger Woods but it also affected brand’s sponsors, including AT&T, Gillette and Gatorade (BBC News, February, 27, 2010). All these brands dropped Tiger Woods from endorsing their products as it was now a negative identity to be associated with. Tag Heuer and Tiger Woods share a special bond; however, Tiger Woods was being cut-off from this high-end Swiss watch maker. Eventually, this did not happen, Tag Heuer announced to ‘downsize’ using Tiger Woods in their campaign (The Huffington Post, December, 18, 2009). Tiger Woods is fortunate to have Nike as its sponsor. After losing its brand identity and immense brand equity, Nike has not turned its back on Tiger Woods. The biggest supporting corporation for Woods is Nike with its campaigns featuring the damaged brand. ABC News (April, 8, 2010) announced the new Nike ad in support of Tiger Woods using Woods father to show emotional support to the human brand. Entertainment Arts (EA) was in process of launching a golf video game based on Tiger Woods when the scandal took place, and they have not backed out from it. The brand still has supporters out there who are defending it from losing all its equity.

Defending the Brand

It was high time for Tiger Woods to stop avoiding the matter in public. Tiger Woods brand identity was damaged due to his misbehaviour that was shared with the world through various media channels causing brand image to be negatively associated. The approach taken by the brand in defense was admitting and apologizing. Tiger Woods in press conference apologized and admitted his despicable behaviour to his family friends and ‘fans’ (The Sun News, December, 07, 2009). This act of defense saved his private life, as well as added a new personality trait to the brand-courageous. A gutful step taken from the brand has helped him overcome the situation. As the brand was now associated with factors like dishonesty, it may now have gained back the title of truthfulness. This simple, yet the most powerful step saved Tiger Woods from drowning further.

Conclusion

Human brands, like all other brands, need to protect their identity, but prudence is more required in comparison. Brand identity is made up of several associations that are derived from functional to emotional benefits that consumers connect them to. Thus, managing customer-based brand equity becomes highly important in order to manage a good brand reputation. In our case of Tiger Woods scandal, consumer-brand relationship got affected, resulting in weakening customer-based brand equity. Consumers of the brand formed negative image of the brand and were no longer willing to associate themselves with. The reputation was harmed immensely resulting Tiger Woods being detached from its stakeholders. An honest apology was approached by the brand, which is facilitating to regain positive associations and restore the distorted Tiger Woods image.

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