Some PR advice for Tiger Woods

Image - Batimore Sun

Unless you have been in a coma for the past four months, you are aware of Tiger Woods PR issue. If you have been in a coma (my apologies), live under a rock or are just out of it, please click here before continuing reading this post. As you may have heard, the world’s top golfer will break his silence and issue statements to a group of assembled media on Friday. While the speculation on what will be said, when he’ll return to golf and if there will be an apology will run rampant, there will be no Q&A so some may be left with a sense of emptiness. As a PR pro, I would like to offer some free advice to Tiger to help get his image rebuilding start on the right foot.

Don’t lie – While the situation may look bleak, it could be a lot worse. Treat your flack like you would treat a lawyer. Tell them the whole truth; if you feel like omitting things, I’d like to offer Roger Clemens and Mark McGwire as examples of why you should not leave any reasonable doubt in the mind of the public. This will also help your team run a tight ship in repairing your image.

Air your laundry – Now this piece of advice may sting a little, so please have a seat. While the public may know about your infidelity, it is important to let your flack know about any lingering bad news that may leak out. Now the approach can be done one of two ways. The first is to admit to everything that you have done – everything. It is risky, but it puts the kibosh on any more skeletons from coming out of the closet. The second is the more conservative approach but could open you up to more prying down the road. It is to simply tell your flack everything and have them on the ready to disprove everything that newly emerged sources have to say when they do emerge.

Personally I would air it all, it shows that you are human and will also gain some sympathy from the public. You’ve already gotten out of rehab for your sexual addiction so you are on the road to recovery already. It could also help make the sponsors less edgy around you.

All eyes on you – Prior to Thanksgiving, you may have been able to avoid the public eye away from the links, everyone will be looking for dirt on you. That counts everyone from Golf Week scribes to TMZ hacks, so be ready for it. With that said, you can quell some of the intrigue by taking option #1 above and by also making one thing clear in your opening statement, you will field questions on your personal matters once and after that one time any question brought up will end your interview. While some folks may call your bluff on this, stick to it. You are golf so if they want to get your take on something, they are playing by your rules.

Play nice – Now don’t take this as saying to lay off your dominating game, but rather to open up to your fellow golfers. Let them know that you are sorry and show the human side of you. There are more of them than you, so getting them on board with rebuilding Tiger2.0 can help get the media in line with your no personal talk mantra.

Dominate - At the end of the day, there is one thing that will silence critics instantaneously – winning. So the sooner you get back on the course in your cold-calculated way, the better. When you are winning, the golf world is relevant and the folks in the PGA front office have mile wide smiles on their faces and fat wallets. So when you win everyone wins.

While this post may fall onto deaf ears, in the rare chance that TW or his agent sees this post – call me. Contact info is on the about page.

What would you do if you were Tiger’s flack is there any advice that you’d offer him?