… if only Tiger Woods’ management and sponsors had read this very timely article in the December Harvard Business Review: “Let The Response Fit The Scandal,” by Alice Tybout and Michelle Roehm. They write, in part:
Executives…[are] much more likely to get caught off guard by how far-reaching the aftershocks of a scandalous situation may be.
Indeed. Tybout and Roehm do a nice job of defining a scandal (remember, this article was written before the Tiger news broke):
Not all incidents become scandals. The likelihood of a full-blown public scandal, in need of an equally public response, goes up when the incident is surprising, vivid, emotional, or pertinent to a central attribute of the brand. (emphasis: the authors)
James Surowiecki, in his New Yorker piece about l’affaire Tiger, succinctly explains how Tiger’s infidelities were, in fact, pertinent to his central brand attribute.
Tags: brand, communications, scandal
