Interviews & Articles
Millsport's senior sports business executives are available for interviews, commentary, and analysis on a number of sports marketing and sponsorship topics. To arrange an interview, please contact Chris Anderson at (214) 259-3290.
Tiger Woods’s Trust Ranking Plunges After Infidelity Admission
Dec 16, 2009
Tiger Woods’s Trust Ranking Plunges After Infidelity Admission
By Aaron Kuriloff
(Bloomberg) -- Tiger Woods, as popular with the public as Frank Sinatra before he admitted to infidelity, is now about as appealing as singer Kid Rock, a consumer research company found.
The 33-year-old Woods dropped to 78th from 10th on the Davie Brown Index, which is used by advertising agencies to gauge the ability of celebrities to influence consumers. That’s a similar decline to the one suffered by actor Mel Gibson, who dropped to 74th from third after an anti-Semitic tirade.
Woods once posted the ninth-best score in the “aspiration” category, putting him in the company of Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning and Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs. He now ranks 2,325th out of 2,400, alongside basketball’s Ron Artest, who was suspended for 73 games after a brawl in Detroit in 2004.
Woods’s decline has been more sudden and precipitous than Gibson’s or Michael Vick’s, who was suspended from the National Football League and served jail time for dog fighting, said Chris Anderson, a spokesman for Omnicom Group Inc.’s Dallas- based The Marketing Arm, which compiles the index.
“Nothing compares to how far Tiger’s fallen,” Anderson, said in an e-mail.
Woods, who once ranked as the 96th most-appealing celebrity on the index, alongside Sinatra, is now 2,225th, Anderson said.
The public now trusts the 14-time major championship winner as much as it does comedian Pauly Shore or actor Jane Fonda, who was photographed in a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft battery during the Vietnam War, Anderson said. The top-ranked golfer’s score used to rank alongside David Robinson, the former basketball player and U.S. Navy officer.
