Comments on: Spurious academic study of the day, Tiger Woods edition

By: CSUSmktgfac

CSUSmktgfac — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:23:25 +0000

Your blog makes exellent points, missed by so many media outlets who ran the release virtually word for word. My marketing students have learned much from the Tiger Woods case study in PR mgt., and the lessons will continue next semester with the UC Davis release and your blog (with the word use error corrected of course).

By: MpressiveNglish

MpressiveNglish — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:46:10 +0000

“effect”, not “affect at the margin”

By: An0nym0us

An0nym0us — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 22:37:23 +0000

Why would anyone care anyway? Who is Woods? Did he invent cancer cure, or new clean energy source, or (like Al Gore) the Internet? He’s good (admittedly, very good) at the game of golf, but it’s just that – a game, nothing more than that. I would care about his endorsement only if it’s something related to the game of golf, and even then with a grain of salt, because what’s good for an accomplished professional is not necessarily good for a not-so-skilled amateur, and vice versa. The money companies spend on celebrity endorsements would be much better spent on R&D – at least that’s what can make their product better.

By: MikeK

MikeK — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 17:27:17 +0000

Perhaps this is indicative of the overall economic mess we’re in given that these academic economists have no clue how to value something. I pity their students entering the job market.

As to their Acceture theory, if Tiger were to capture all the excess profit his endorsement generates, then why would Accenture bother with him?

Do they honestly believe that people would sell stock in company based on an endorser’s behavior?

I agree that Accenture is clearly the biggest loser, but for reasons of who the target audience is. It’s hard to imagine that Gillette or Gatorade would suffer as much. In fact, one could make a case that tying their products to Tiger’s non-sports activities might actually boost their sales (use our razor and attract someone like Tiger’s girlfriends).

It would be an interesting experiment to see how proficient the public is with connecting products with their endorsers.

By: LeighCaldwell

LeighCaldwell — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 05:24:32 +0000

If only UC Davis had a share price, we’d be able to measure how much this press release has benefited them.

By: wallstworker

wallstworker — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:39:47 +0000

Well done for pointing out such a ridiculous conclusion on the part of the UCDavis team! I’m not sure how something so obviously wrong could have been published by them and have got past the most basic of smell tests!

Of course what is really difficult to tell in today’s day and age whether the publicity (“Hey, there’s no such thing as bad publicity in the PR world!”) that Accenture and Gatorade got due to the Tiger scandal will be net negative or even positive from the higher brand recall that many readers will experience! I would love to read a study that has found a way to determine this!

In the meantime, it’s good to see that at least someone will benefit from the scandal

wallstworker @ http://the-moneyverse.blogspot.com/2009/ 12/does-association-with-tiger-really-hu rt.html