Well, this feels like it took forever to happen – advertisers are starting to realize that Tiger Woods has become more trouble than he’s worth, and they’ve just begun to back away slowly from his endorsements. First up: Gatorade. On Tuesday, Gatorade announced that the Tiger Woods-branded drink (Gatorade Tiger “Focus”) was going to be “discontinued”. Probably because when people now think “How does Tiger take some refreshment?” the answer that comes to most peoples’ minds is “an assortment of waitresses, party girls and hookers”.
Those looking to replenish their electrolytes with a bottle of Gatorade Tiger Focus are out of luck: Gatorade has announced that it is discontinuing the Tiger-Woods-branded beverage.
Gatorade (a division of PepsiCo Inc.) says that the decision to shelf the drink was made before Woods’ minor car accident and the related tumult of adultery allegations, the Associated Press reports.
As first announced in Beverage Digest Nov. 25, Tiger Focus debuted in March 2008. The drink was “formulated to contain more electrolytes based on factors that affect Woods’ training and competition, including his workout intensity, his hydration strategies as well as duration and hot weather conditions he often faces on the course,” according to Gatorade.com.
Yet sales of the beverage were down 34% in 2009 through October. The 33 year-old golfer’s run-in with a fire hydrant occurred on Nov. 27 — two days after infidelity charges first hit newsstands.
The end of Tiger Focus does not, at press time, mean the end of Woods’ lucrative endorsement deal with the sports drink company. In a Nov. 30 statement, Gatorade said, “We wish Tiger well as he recovers and look forward to seeing him on the course soon…Our partnership with Tiger continues.”
[From Us Weekly]
Gatorade isn’t Tiger’s only problem. Radar (and other outlets) are reporting that any ad or commercial featuring Tiger has been pulled off the air. Tiger has not been seen selling anything or fulfilling his contracts on air since November 29th. Note this, however – Tiger still gets paid. He doesn’t have to give that ad money back. So basically, Tiger gotmillions of dollars to endorse products, and now no one wants to use his endorsements. It’s an interesting scheme:
The fallout from Tiger Woods’ alleged extramarital affairs continues. Marketers have pulled all of the golfer’s ads from prime-time television networks and 19 cable channels, according to a Bloomberg.com report.
According to data from Nielsen Co., the last ad featuring Woods was a 30 second Gillette spot that ran on Nov. 29. Tiger ads were also noticeably absent from commercials on several weekend spots as well.
“Last weekend there wasn’t any advertisement during those games,” Aaron Lewis, a spokesperson at Nielsen, said.
As RadarOnline.com reported, Gatorade has discontinued its Tiger “Focus” Drink. Gatorade released a statement Tuesday saying the move to discontinue its “Tiger Focus” drink had nothing to do with the golfer’s growing scandal and that the decision was made before Tiger’s car crash and allegations of extra marital affairs.
[From Radar]
Yeah, right, none of this has anything to do with the neverending reports of Tiger bangin’ anyone with two legs and a pulse (and even that is probably setting the bar too high). On one side, I kind of have some small, tiny, little bit of sympathy for Tiger – after all, he was hired for all of these commercials and ad campaigns because he is an extraordinary athlete. And yet, his wholesome family image was part of the package deal – he sold that as well. So, I don’t have that much sympathy for him.
