Over the last three months, both online and offline media have been totally consumed with the saga of Tiger Woods and the allegations against him that he committed multiple acts of adultery against his wife. Not sure if it is all truth, but the court or public perception has decided for the most part that he is guilty of all of the allegations made by the various women that have said they had a relationship with Tiger. There have hundreds of reported sightings of Tiger at different places around the world, but there have not been any verified sighting since the day after Thanksgiving.
The infatuation by the media and the public with the sex scandal causes his good deed of donating $3 million to Haiti relief efforts to go unnoticed. This is an example of where a personal or corporate brand needs to dedicate money and resources to protecting their online identity and shaping the information that is shown first when there are searches for their name.
A search for Tiger Woods on the day after he pledged $3 million in relief aid, still shows links about his scandal before it mentions his donation. It will require a lot of work for a reputation management expert to overcome the many stories about the scandal because most of the stories were linked to from other websites hundreds or even thousands of times.
Even a search through Google News for Tiger Woods has no mention of his donation in the top 10 links. This is where Woods’ team needs to be pushing press releases and posting to various news sites, so that his stories of his donation moves ahead of stories about his scandal.
Unfortunately, most of the news outlets have not mentioned his donation, but from their perspective viewers are much more interested and engaged in scandal than humanitarian efforts. There are also many who question Tiger’s motive, thinking that the reason for the donation is to divert attention from his scandal. If that were his motive, a donation of $1 million would have done that just as well as $3million.
Managing your brand online is very important and as this example shows, very difficult as well. To limit the exposure of damaging information, brands should strongly consider hiring online reputation managers who could help to ensure that positive information rises above the negative stories. The cost of the reputation manager will seem like a steal when you consider the cost that it will take to repair your brand, if repair is even possible.
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