Yeah, apparently Gatorade wasn’t all that impressed with Tiger Woods’ televised apology last week. If you know me, then you know that I painstakingly monitor my soft drink news. That’s why I can tell you that PepsiCo Inc. has dropped Tiger and his considerable baggage at the nearest bus stop. Tiger and Gatorade are no more. From MSNBC:
“We no longer see a role for Tiger in our marketing efforts and have ended our relationship,” a Gatorade spokeswoman said. “We wish him all the best.”
The sticky sweet soft drink follows AT&T, Accenture and Gillete as major sponsors that have dropped Woods, and you know how these things go. Once one steer is spooked, they tend to stampede.
The Gatorade announcement doesn’t comke as a real surprise, and may not have anything to do with Tiger’s Friday TV appearance at all. Accoprding to a recent study by University of California, Davis finance professors, shareholders of such Tiger Woods-endorsed stocks as Nike and PepsiCo have lost between $5 billion to $12 billion in market value since the sex scandal broke. Nike, which continues to stand by Tiger, is doing so presumably because they have nowhere else to go. Are you going to buy Stewart Cink-endorsed golf shirts? But Gatorade isn’t as intricately linked to the Tiger brand.
… And suddenly, the “performance art” by that fake Tiger Woods Gatorade label guy seems very wise and prescient. If PepsiCo had embraced his idea, they might still be in the Tiger Woods business.
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Gatorade drops Tiger Woods as spokesperson [MSNBC]
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- Tim McFarlane - Feb 26, 2010 at 7:45 PM
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Kid can’t and should not, look up to Woods any longer and their parents should see to it that they don’t. Now, if only Nike took “stock” of their future.
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- LewP - Feb 27, 2010 at 5:14 AM
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If you take a step back from all the Tiger-bashing and reflect on all of our own mistakes, you begin to wonder why any of us point any fingers at all.
I guess the next guy has made more mistakes in life?
I predict at some point in this Tiger saga, people will recognize Tiger made huge mistakes. Life will go on, and sponsors will come back. At some point Tiger will be the one who gets to choose them again.
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- Hella - Feb 27, 2010 at 8:21 AM
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Its gonna come back full circle, Kobe was dropped by NIke only to be resigned. ANd when Tiger starts winning again all his sponsors rivals are gonna be on the bandwagon. And all of a sudden Shick, Powerade, Statefarm are gonna be pushing tiger…..
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- louis - Feb 27, 2010 at 8:26 AM
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He will come back stronger than ever and all those sponsors are going to regret dumping him for something that must of them probably are doing right now(cheat). Tiger should go with new sponsors and never give the ones who dump him a chance ever again. I will support and buy any product with Tiger Woods name on it.
