It’s not the morals of Tiger, it’s the lie of the Tiger that has the public in an uproar.

The world is full of sleazy public figures, athletic and otherwise. And it’s not that Tiger has somehow achieved an Olympian level of marital infidelity. It’s hard to believe that 16 women, or whatever the number really is, is a new standard (or nadir) for professional athletes who are married. Tiger’s problem is that he got caught playing the American public for fools.

For more than a decade, with the help of at least one global corporate behemoth (Nike), Tiger perpetuated a fraud for the purpose of getting us, who don’t make $100 million a year for playing golf and pushing products, to spend our money. The “I’m the perfect athlete-son-husband-father” persona was created to make him the perfect pitchman, for which he was paid unprecedented sums. And now the public has realized he’s little more than a snake oil salesman, carefully tending a fake image to sell us razors, shaving cream, golf balls, business consulting services, watches, cars, and on and on.

That’s Tiger’s problem. It’s not moral outrage that is doing in Tiger. It’s a public outraged that they have been conned.

My brand is Rosenberg Communications. I guard it like the Air Force guards nuclear warheads. (Oops, maybe not the best analogy.) It’s why obsessive-compulsiveness is my favorite state of being, why perfection is my favorite aspiration.

Somebody I know recently did a blogging blooper because she didn’t guard her brand very closely. She does a broadcast e-mail for every blog post (not something I would do). Hers is a political blog — a very good one, actually. Recently, she had a guest blogger. This guest blogger used the post to endorse one of the presidential candidates. Unfortunately, it wasn’t clear that it was a guest blogger. Some of the regular readers were dumb struck that the blogger I know issued an endorsement, and who she apparently endorsed. My friend the blogger had to issue a clarification.

Having a guest blogger: free.

Posting a guest blog: free.

Not watching who is perceived to be speaking for your brand: Really, really costly.

Among the large amount of academic study of brand management, some of the most interesting is what might be called brand stretching. It’s what John McCain is wisely doing when he’s not sitting in front of the TV watching Clinton and Obama beat each other up.

Profitability of many products is driven both by market share and what category the product occupies. So, for example, whether premium brands or value brands dominate a category impacts how market share relates to profitability. And moving to or stretching into a new category requires careful planning and execution. Some brands have done it very well. Some brands have not. Mercedes did it flawlessly in introducing the C-Class. Jaguar stumbled when it introduced its “lower-class” model.

I’ve been intrigued to see John McCain stand on that famous bridge in Selma, or walk the streets of New Orleans stating the obvious-but-important observation that the current administration failed that city’s citizens (especially, and painfully, minority citizens) following Katrina.

John McCain, obviously, has very strong market share in his principal product category: Republicans. He also enjoys rather strong market share among independents. So, during this time of waiting for the conventions and an opponent, he decides to present perhaps a new picture of himself to categories where he’s not so strong: Democrats, African Americans, etc.

I’m not being cynical. Not at all. John McCain does not strike me as a man who says the President should have been on the ground in New Orleans, not up in a plane flying over looking down, if he doesn’t mean it. He doesn’t strike me as a man who pays tribute to painful memories on that bridge in Selma, if he doesn’t mean it.

And it strikes me that he and his team are doing some very smart brand stretching.

I’ve just switched to Mac; I’m slowly growing out of my PC years. When a Mac is processing something, a colorful little beach ball appears on my screen and it spins and spins until the computer’s work is done. When a PC is processing something a little hourglass pops up on my screen; nothing moves, the sand doesn’t drip. It’s static.

My Mac makes me feel as if something is happening. The PC reminds me that I am waiting. The PC is doing a lousy marketing job.
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My son is a classical pianist. He is studying at a conservatory in a major city with a preeminent pianist. His preeminent pianist instructor told him it’s time for him to perform a full public recital. I’ve helped my son with some advertising and online marketing. Whether 200 or 20 people show up doesn’t matter. Together, we put his face and musical resume in front of the consumers that care about music in a major city. That’s good marketing, no matter how many people show up, because sometimes the marketing is the sale.
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On the rare occasions that the e-mail goes down in our offices I curse — a lot. That’s because, once our clients learn our e-mail is down, it’s bad marketing.

Because good — and bad — marketing is countless little things.

Last Blogenberg I wrote that “accuracy is what accuracy does” when noting why the mumbling in the distance heard by traditional media is the last rites. That is, unless traditional media stops pretending it controls information and, most important, has a monopoly on accuracy.

Citizen journalism — where your neighbor feeds your need for information — will overtake traditional journalism as the trusted source of information in the coming years. That’s because it’s all about control and accuracy. Technology allows consumers to control where and how they get information. Journalism, advertising, marketing, etc. no longer have control over what information you get and where you get it. You do. And traditional journalism no longer decides what’s accurate. You do. People assign credibility where they decide to assign it.

What do you think people find most credible? The New York Times, Washington Post, or Los Angeles Times? Or different feeds of information from neighbors, colleagues, family, the clerk at the local drugstore, etc., all creating a tapestry of information from which they determine their version of accuracy. Because accuracy is what accuracy does.
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I usually pay no attention to the Public Relations Society of America online discussion group for independent and small PR shop owners. But a recent thread about marketing caught my eye. Several contributors raved about a certain marketing consultant. They touted his books, his websites, his talks. They said he can revolutionize your marketing.

I was intrigued. Goodness knows, bringing in new business is one of the biggest challenges I face. So I clicked through to the marketing genius’ website. It was a cluttered mess. It was the online version of the proverbial everything but the kitchen sink. My reaction? If you can’t put together a clean, tight, attractive website that easily and quickly tells me what I need to know, why in the world would I pay the brain that created that website to think about my marketing?

Every morning I stop at a Starbucks near my house for green tea and a bran muffin. (Did you notice how I used Starbucks, green tea, and bran muffin in the same sentence? My fake cool quotient just rose dramatically!)

Every morning the same woman tends the cash register. She’s too nice to customers. She talks to them. She pretends to care about them. She needs to stop it, immediately, because she’s taken good customer service, put it on steroids, and created irritating, bad customer service. Because in line, behind the people she’s chatting up, is me, damn’t. I’m very anxious to get to work. And all her chatting adds probably three minutes to my wait. Call it crazy, but those three minutes mean something to me. Frankly, more than her inane chit chat means to the people she is chit chatting.

This morning, somebody asked her where the milk is. She answered, “Up front, by the door, to the left.” How about just responding, “Up front”? It’s a small store. They’ll find the milk, damn’t. And I’ll get my damn Starbucks green tea and bran muffin quicker, damn’t!

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Two very important questions deeply troubling Blogenberg today: One, is April Fool’s day dying, if not already dead? Today is April Fool’s day. Good bet you didn’t think about it until just this moment. I’m old enough to remember when April Fool’s day meant something — something foolish, of course. Maybe we just take ourselves too seriously — like demanding our Starbucks green tea and bran muffin three minutes quicker?

Second, I was in a hospital the other day. One wing of this hospital is named the Progressive Care Unit. What’s that make the other units in this hospital? Perhaps the Obsolete Care Because Our Doctors Haven’t Read a Medical Journal in Two Years Unit. Or maybe the We Weren’t Able to Dump this Equipment on the Underfunded Public Hospital in the Inner City Unit.

This is the first edition of Blogenberg News Links. Each week we’ll compile, in no particular order, a few stories that we’re following that you may not have noticed, that we’ve found interesting and that provide insight into communications, media, business and culture.

• True to form, Marc Gunther takes a provacative look at business and the potential costs of carbon emissions caps.
• Seth Godin sort of perfectly captures the definition of good writing.
• NPR covers the impact of blogging on sports reporting in “Blogging the Name of the Game in Sports Coverage.”
• Conde Nast Portfolio explains why CEOs should be aware of what their kids post online.
• Newsweek predicts the “Return of the Experts” will define the future of the Web.
• The Harvard Business Review podcast looks at how to make your business a learning organization.
• Brandstorming explains that a small business’ online marketing budget is better spent on blogging than Pay-Per-Click advertising.
• From Good Experience, a look at the ultimate example of corporate citizenship.

Brands are sticky. Visceral reactions, emotions, gut instincts, what was spinning in your head the last time you were exposed to the brand — all have much more to do with how you respond to that brand than intellectual thought. That’s the mistake too many people make when it comes to PR and marketing: it’s the feeling, stupid, not the thought. And that’s the problem Barack Obama has right now and, unfortunately, for quite some time to come.

When it comes to marketing (and politics is the ultimate in marketing) feelings trump intellectualizing every time. People feel a brand. They feel a candidate. Relatively little deductive reasoning enters into their personal equation. And what they feel is the sum of lots of different feelings felt at different times. Permanently added into the sum of feelings people have toward the Barack Obama brand are the controversial words of his former pastor. For many people, that’s not going away. For them, it will color, at least a bit, how they forever view Barack Obama even if they forget all about Rev. Wright.

The big problem for Barack Obama? Brands are sticky. You can’t intellectualize away what sticks to a brand. That’s how the Obama team is trying to deal with the Rev. Wright problem. That’s all they can do, and they are doing it very well. Problem is, brands are sticky — for months to come.

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Ok, so this isn’t really a PSA. But if it were, a new study suggests it would not just run in the late night hours. (H/T: PRSA’s PR Tactics and The Strategist Online)

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