Nike will air a TV commercial prior to the beginning of the Masters Tournament with Tiger Woods and a voice-over of his late father admonishing him about his personal problems on the eve of his return to golf. In the retro old-school black-and-white ad, Woods looks directly and silently into the camera while a recording of his late father is heard, speaking about taking responsibility. Earl Woods asks rhetorically, "Did you learn anything?" I'm getting this as secondhand hearsay so I'm relying on the PGA website for a description of the ad.
This technology worked effectively in 2000 with Natalie Cole and her late father, Nat King Cole doing a faux duet of the classic Nat King Cole song “Unforgettable.” But this Tiger Woods commercial isn't the same thing. This is not a tribute to a legendary entertainer and racial trailblazer like Nat King Cole, but is a rather cynical attempt to curry favor with pissed-off sponsors. You will catch on to the manipulation technique if you hear cheesy piano music in the background. Ad agencies like to use a manipulative piano music score with ads for health care providers and charities to ad pathos.
The only person to whom Woods owes an apology to is his wife. In that same spirit, Jesse James owes an apology only to Sandra Bullock. None of their sexual pecadillos is any of our business. Nor should we expect that people that make huge sums of money in the entertainment business owes any of us a duty to be a role model. They are working stiffs that happen to have highly compensated and prized attributes that's all. If you buy a product because of a celebrity's endorsement then I understand P. T. Barnum's unorthodoxically wise quotes that, “There's a sucker born every minute” and that “Without promotion something terrible happens... Nothing!”
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