Accenture, Gillette back away from Tiger Woods - Essay Example

Topic: Accenture, Gillette back away from Tiger Woods Affiliation: Accenture is a global management firm that deals with consultation services, technology services and it is also an outsourcing firm. The organization took Woods to represent its high performance business strategy. He was dealing with the advertisement and communication section of the firm. Accenture, Gillette back away from Woods was by the vulnerability that Woods created. If a brand ambassador engages in activities that do not conform to the values of the brand and the firm providing it, the brand and the firm are bound to be adversely affected.

Accenture and Gillett’s advertising is so closely related to Tiger Woods. The link between the past and present performance of the firms have significant differences, and the back away from Woods is not without its consequences. Branding is the impression that an individual has about an organization’s products and services, out of the image that the organization creates for those products and services. Each product has its own image and a consumer tries to use a brand which has a maximum utility and one that fits into specific tastes and preferences.

Tiger Woods fitted in between the product and the consumer to bring the image of the product closer to what the consumer expected (Strege, 2010, p. 16). In this period of high competition in the world markets, taking a position in the consumers’ mind space is tough. Celebrities are therefore used to capture the consumers’ attention, just like it is the case in Accenture and Gillette. Endorsing the intrinsic value the firms’ brand necessitated the back away. For Accenture it would be uncomfortable to deal with a brand ambassador who is caught up in social conflicts by getting involved in infidelities.

Accenture would not like to varnish its image in the market by continuing to be associated with Tiger Woods’ who confessed and opted to go for infidelity break from his profession to spend time with his family (Helling, 2010, p.215). They could not afford to be with family man in business which was carrying out multinational business outsourcing services. Accenture is a professional organization it should be dealing also with professionals so they had to do away with Woods because he now is dealing with personal life but not professional life which was the main concern of Accenture endorsing him.

Friedman and Friedman defined a celebrity as a person whom public knows him or her because of his achievements in areas other than that of the product branded. Famous people have a high degree of loyalty, recall and attention attached to them so because of the bad image of the scandals Tiger Woods associated himself with; Accenture and Gillette had to back him away this is because he needed a privacy and concentration on his family matters. He did not also want to appear on public eyes so it was so difficult for the firms to deal with him as he was used mostly by these firms to do advertisements on TVs and magazines.

It was hard for the two organizations to deal with him because he had spoilt his public reputation due to his family scandals. Also by considering that these are big organizations which are known globally it means that a group of its shareholders affected by these events is too large. Secondly an endorser should be grouped with all other firms associated with the parent company. Even though Gillette operated separately and publicly traded as an individual firm, its results where statistically significant in that the overall pattern of losses at the parent company which is not possible to change from their ordinary day to day stock prices (Strege, 2010, p. 20-25). This greatly affected shareholders value in parent companies.

Accenture was using Woods as their centre body for advertisement but they had to make another decision after doing analysis of him and after weighing the effects of sustaining him in their organization. They had to stop using him as their advertisement representative because he would be vulnerable to the media yet he needed privacy. The organization had also to figure out how their company would be affected by Woods break and if their long term shareholders where going to lose because of his decision.

The decision Accenture and Gillette took was the right one because the endorser who in this case was Woods had ruined his public reputation and in the adverts he was supposed to show the real image of the company, retaining him in the firm would cost them dearly than when they are not having him (Woods, 2011, p.318). The consumers will relate the personality of the person carrying out the advert to the product. References Helling, S, (2010), Tiger: The Real Story, California: Da Capo Press.

Strege, J, (2010), Adweek, Volume 51, Issues 1-25, New York: VNU Business Publications. Woods, R, (2011), Social Issues in Sport, Michigan: Human Kinetics.