Is Tiger Woods Brand Equity on the decline now?

Up until Friday Nov. 27 at 2:25 a.m. I'd say that the Tiger Woods brand was on top of the world. He is built a massive worldwide brand icon around his birth name, and a very marketable name it is. He has multiple video games, his most recent being Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2010 which had a great debut at retail, nearly doubling the units sold in the first month at market of the previous best-two launches. He has amazing sponsorship deals like Nike, Tag Heure, and Accenture.

So...

That Friday night, Woods backs out of his driveway near Orlando, Fla., and his black Cadillac SUV strikes a fire hydrant and hits a neighbor's tree. He is rushed by ambulance to a local hospital. From that point on, every move he made had and will continue to have a direct effect on the value of his brand.

Unfortunately for high profile celebrities like Tiger Woods, their brand value is only expected to continue to grow annually (especially by his sponsors) and since their brand is "themselves" well after all, humans will make mistakes. When a high profile personal brand makes a mistake it will have more of an impact than a typical company brand (Walmart or Nike) or retail brand (ie. Colgate or Tide) because we as humans relate to their situations.

So I look at the value of someone's personal brands in two distinct categories:

1. Rising Brand

2. Falling Brand

The Rising brand is someone who is either in the midst of their 15 min of fame or who has continued to show a consistent upward trend in their positive PR and brand awareness through the years. They may not be in the spotlight for a couple months or longer but its not because they are loosing value its might be because they are busy on other projects keeping them out of the spot light. Either way, they are not falling, yet.

Now the Falling Brand. This is when the high profile celebrity like Tiger Woods gets into a negative situation or is exposing the result of bad decisions. In his case, Tiger Woods having an affair with, Jaimee Grubbs, a very attractive Los Angeles based cocktail waitress. Well that decision to have the affair is how quickly a very valuable personal brand can go from great to bad or rising to falling. Tiger starting at 2:25 a.m. on a Friday night.

Now all is not lost, we have all seen this happen time and time again (ie. Bill Clinton) and we as society will let this pass and we will forgive and we will continue to follow Tiger on his tournaments, play his video games, maybe even buy the products that he endorses. However, our loyalty as consumers sometimes comes with a price and in today's society, its about personal brands "being honest and human".

I believe if Tiger continues to admit his regretful decisions, gets back to working on his game, shows the respect to his wife and family and ultimately faces the fans his brand equity will begin to climb back up that hill and be on the rise again.