{"id":1483,"date":"2009-12-02T01:28:16","date_gmt":"2009-12-02T06:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BrandTwist.com\/?p=1483"},"modified":"2018-10-18T20:14:40","modified_gmt":"2018-10-18T20:14:40","slug":"is-denial-the-best-defense-against-brand-damage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/celebrity-branding\/is-denial-the-best-defense-against-brand-damage\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Denial the Best Defense Against Brand Damage?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Serena Williams was fined $190K <\/a>for her outburst at the line judge during last September’s US Open.<\/p>\n

This is compared to $320K she won for making it to the Semi Finals.<\/p>\n

The financial damage seems relatively contained.<\/p>\n

But I wonder about the longer term damage to her brand.
\nAs far as I know, no sponsors have pulled out. <\/p>\n

But it will be interesting to see whether the crowd is with her or against her at January\u2019s Australian Open. <\/p>\n

If there is a cooling off, it may impact future sponsorships.<\/p>\n

They are two very different situations, but nevertheless the news in the same week of Serena\u2019s fine and Tiger Wood\u2019s late night car accident, made me see some similarities between the two incidents.<\/p>\n

Namely\u2026.denial.<\/p>\n


\nWhile Serena eventually apologized to the line judge and the public, her first reaction in the post game news conference was to deny that she had any regrets or would have done anything differently.<\/p>\n

Tiger is practicing another sort of denial. <\/p>\n

Rightly or wrongly, he is refusing to see this as a matter for public comment. He keeps insisting that it a strictly private affair.<\/p>\n

Granted Serena\u2019s incident was public. In the middle of a champion tennis match on live TV in front of millions of people.<\/p>\n

Tiger\u2019s happened at night near his private residence. And if not for the photo of the totaled car, many people would not have a public image to experience the incident.<\/p>\n

However, both are very public figures. Leveraging their personas not just in their jobs as athletes but in numerous product endorsements. <\/p>\n

Is denial the newest brand management strategy?
\nIs it an effective one?<\/p>\n

Does it fuel the fire or does it help contain things until the next celebrity blooper takes center stage and someone else is on the hook?<\/p>\n

As I was writing this on Tuesday, Richard Gere <\/a>was in the news for cutting down too many trees (200) on his NY Farm without local permission. Granted not as dramatic, but it started to get some air time.<\/p>\n

After all Serena shared the gossip columns with Kanye during their nearly simultaneous week of bad behavior<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They in turn got some relief when David Letterman’s <\/a>foibles became water cooler fodder.<\/p>\n

Has are the public\u2019s memory gotten shorter?<\/p>\n

Or are we recognizing celebrities as human and forgiving them more quickly? <\/p>\n

I think time will tell if Tiger and Serena\u2019s brands will have any long term damage.<\/p>\n

In the case of Tiger a lot will depend on whether the rumors or multiple infidelities are proven to be true.<\/p>\n

But it does seem like celebrities and their handlers could start making a case for keeping quiet, riding things out and hoping that some other celebrity is about to do something a lot worse to divert the public\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s my point of view. What\u2019s your twist?
\nIs denial an effective way to manage your personal brand?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Serena Williams was fined $190K for her outburst at the line judge during last September’s US Open. This is compared to $320K she won for making it to the Semi Finals. The financial damage seems relatively contained. But I wonder about the longer term damage to her brand. As far as I know, no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1483","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-celebrity-branding"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1483"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16592,"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1483\/revisions\/16592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandtwist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}