Tiger Woods: Coming into Focus

Having finally watched the much anticipated ESPN interview from last night, I am breathing a sigh of relief. As you may have seen in my previous posts, I have been hoping for a good solid comeback, but wasn't seeing many signs of life. Looking back at Tiger’s public interactions since December, it’s been a strange mix of obstinate silence (especially during those first 48 – 72 hours) and a series of quasi self-revelations. Sunday’s appearance showed us a more patient, vulnerable, and frankly likeable Tiger Woods than we saw at his recent press conference.

From Cardboard to Flesh and Blood: the New Art of Spokesperson Prep

Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Chris O’Brien, business and technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. Initially, I wanted to discuss the art of “listening” during an interview – not the reporter’s ability to listen, but rather the spokesperson’s ability to listen. Chris and I had a great discussion, but I emerged with a slightly different theme for this posting – the importance of Authenticity.

Tiger’s Big Day

On Friday, Tiger Woods will “break his silence” and make an official statement Friday morning from the clubhouse at the TPC Sawgrass, the headquarters of the PGA Tour in Florida. Like a sports analyst giving pre-game commentary, here’s my take: His statement needs to do four things: 1) Express believable self awareness. It has to be real, maybe even a little bit raw. 2) Make us see a little bit of ourselves in his description of his fall from grace. 3) Remind us of how much we love golf BECAUSE of Tiger Woods, without actually coming out and saying it. 4) He needs to mean every word he says. If this is lip service or an acting job, it’ll fall flat. Falling flat probably won’t hurt his golfing career, but he’ll lose the hearts and minds battle (which means loss of endorsements, ultimately).

Heartbreak Warfare: My Advice to John Mayer

I was going to try to refrain from being yet another voice condemning John Mayer for his absurd, racist, sexist tirade in Playboy, but here I am. Blogging about it. Rather than state the obvious (“ill advised” doesn’t even begin to cover it), John Mayer’s off-the-cuff interview with Playboy has certainly gotten me thinking a lot about “authenticity.” As many of you know, I’m a huge fan of authenticity, and oddly enough in this day of Reality Everything, it can be an elusive quality.

GoDaddy or Go Home

With the Super Bowl looming large this weekend, I wanted to weigh in on my favorite pre-game controversy: The pulling of GoDaddy’s Half Time ad, affectionately referred to as “Lola.” Here’s the irony: There is not a single D-cup woman featured in this one. For a company noted for making giant breasts synonymous with domain names, this is a real "departure in strategy." Yet, CBS yanked it. Why? See for yourself. For those who can’t watch the 4 ½ minute video above, CBS was concerned that it would offend “some people.”