Tiger & The Tabloids

On November 30, it was just a minor blip on the PR radar screen: Tiger Woods had had a car crash – on his own or a neighbor’s property yet! – and instead of ‘fessing up to a row with his wife, he called it “a private matter”, thinking it would fool us all. Well, now we KNOW why he wanted to keep it “private”. Apart from feeling awful for his wife and their tiny children, I frankly don’t care how many affairs the man has had, but here we have yet another hero with feet of clay, thinking he is exempt from the laws of social behavior.

In today’s world, we all live in glass houses. Nothing is private anymore; any secrets you wish to keep will be revealed in cyberspace by someone else, at warp speed.

So, is Tiger naïve, arrogant, stupid, delusional? Yes.

Rarely before has the foundation of PR been more evident: if you don’t control the message, someone else will, and you may not like the result.