The spot was actually created by artsy brandmakers Wieden & Kennedy, an ad firm here in Portland, Oregon. WK recently got blasted by Willamette Week for their new TV channel/radio station, Califunya, which WWeek thought was silly, dumb and obscure. I think the root cause of both these failures is that WK's fantastic creativity slipped the reins and carefully determining what the message should be sort of fell by the wayside. Tiger has learned something from this sex scandal? Really? Our interest in his sex life is celebrity voyeurism, and our interest in him at all is his ability to play golf, which is wholly independent of his ability to stay faithful to his wife. What do we care if he learned something?
I think WK crafted a beautiful, mesmerizing viral video but it doesn't have the right message. The result was perpetuating a narrative that should have been contradicted. WK and Nike -- a sports brand that people look to because skilled athletes wear their stuff, not because it's a moral authority -- should have made that the message. Maybe they could have done a spot where Tiger is so focused on the ball (remember Tiger's Gatorade?) that he doesn't notice a crowd of bikini-clad women jostling each other for his attention.
