The Tiger Woods Effect You Didn’t Know About

In golf, a decline in TV ratings is often called the Tiger Woods effect. When he doesn’t play, TV ratings are down, even if it is some of the best golf of the year, like the Ryder Cup this past weekend.

This is the Tiger Woods effect you likely have heard about…but there is another Tiger Woods effect, and it has changed me.

After 15 years, I left my job at a Fortune 100 company and set out to start my own marketing consulting business. I had been creating integrated marketing strategies for the last 8+ years. The majority of my ideas would get a price tag put on them by a TV network, media partner, or sports league, and then get sold right back to our company. There was clearly a need for the creation of sellable integrated marketing strategies.

My first opportunity after leaving was a local restaurant, owned by Tiger Woods – The Woods at Jupiter. Marketing strategies with athletes at the center was my expertise, and I wanted to help Tiger. Not because I thought he needed the money, but I hated that the marketing for his new restaurant was on autopilot. Plus, I liked the place—and their burger. His restaurant had been open a while, but they were focused on operations and had spent little effort on marketing. They seemed to expect Tiger’s brand and word-of-mouth to do all the heavy lifting. I visited frequently and developed a marketing strategy for his restaurant. It would be the perfect test case.

During the development process, I dug deeper into the world of online reviews, local marketing, SEO, customer satisfaction, and that word-of-mouth had shifted to digital word-of-mouth.  From my desire to help Tiger Woods get more customers in his restaurant, the idea for the Promoter Strategy was born.

I never approached the Woods Jupiter with the marketing strategy I developed for them. Instead, I was off and running with an idea. Now, this idea is real and delivering results for my clients, today.