Now that the stories about Tiger Woods have descended from “marital woes” to “all out sex/party maniac,” I think Tiger needs a new strategy:

Tiger should go full-steam ahead and plant his flag as “the new Hugh Hefner,” or in my shorthand (trademark pending), “The New Hugh.”

I’m serious here.

Hugh Hefner has made a bloody fortune screwing beautiful women and leading the party life. But he’s ooollllddd. I can’t believe he’s still going strong, supposedly.

Hugh ain’t gonna last forever. We need a new role model, a new Adonis to do all the things we dream about: Tiger.

He’s incredibly handsome.

He’s incredibly rich.

He’s one of the greatest athletes in the world.

He’s one of the greatest commercial pitchmen in the world.

He’s perfect.

Go for it, my man.  Stock your mega-yacht Privacy with hot-and-cold running hotties, Cristal and pate, enjoy it and cash in on it.

You have nothing left to lose.

So it turns out that Tiger Woods has been a carousing, hard partying guy, both as a bachelor and as a married man. In essence, this doesn’t surprise me one bit — in fact, it makes a lot more sense than the partial stories that were coming out the first week about his “transgressions.” I believe that one of the unexplored tensions in our society is the tamping down and frowning upon mens’ natural desires for the attention of women.

What does stun me is all the media and sponsor handwringing and clucking that has ensued now that the stories about Tiger’s wild party life have burst into the open. Where were you, golf media, when Tiger had a bottle of Cristal in one hand and a babe on each arm? Were you partying along with him? Were you up in your rooms playing Nintendo? Or were you just flat out clueless?

And sponsors, starting with Accenture: you mean to tell me that you didn’t check out Tiger’s behavior before or while you employed him? You didn’t do any due diligence to find out if the image you were buying was real? And you want me to trust you (Accenture) with my corporate consulting work?

It seems clear to me that the media, sponsors and the PGA tour all turned a blind eye toward Tiger’s behavior, for one good ‘ol fashioned reason: money. The man has made billions for all the parties above, boosting ratings and selling soap. He was their cash cow, their golden goose. To call him on his behavior would have been commercial suicide.

I understand that too. But spare me the holier-than-thou statements now generally along the lines of “we didn’t know” or “he doesn’t represent the right image for us.” Puh-leeze. How about “we knew all along but we didn’t say anything, so we share the blame for this unfortunate situation, and we’ll do a better job next time.”

PS — And then there’s his wife, Elin Nordegren. She knew before she married Tiger that he was a major ladies man, yet she jumped on the gravy train as well. Here’s People mag, via the NY Daily News:

Nordegren’s friends tell People she knew about Woods’ extracurricular activities but that he promised before their marriage that he would change.

“Elin had talked to other golfers and their wives about Tiger’s wild parties,” a friend told the magazine. “When she asked Tiger about it, he said he would stop doing it. And she believed him. But he never did.”

Uh-oh. It turns out that where there was Thanksgiving Day smoke, there was definitely fire. Tiger Woods has been caught red-handed being a philandering adulterer. Goodbye pristine reputation, maybe goodbye marriage.

But is it goodbye golf game and goodbye endorsements? No and probably not.

Woods issued another statement today, this time saying he “let my family down and I regret those transgressions.” [Full text of Tiger Woods' statement here.]

But just as Tiger redefined golf, he may be in the process of redefining celebrity scandal-mongering. His statement goes on to say:

No matter how intense curiosity about public figures can be, there is an important and deep principle at stake which is the right to some simple, human measure of privacy… Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn’t have to mean public confessions.

That’s right. He hasn’t been accused of using performance-enhancing drugs, betting on the game, animal cruelty or physical violence. Those are the types of things that derail sports careers.

He’s one of the world’s sexiest men, he probably had and has woman propositioning him constantly, and he took some of them up on it, even after he was married. That makes him a fool and a cad, but that’s all. No evidence yet that he paid for it, a la Eliot Spitzer, who after all was an elected official, and a sanctimonious one at that. Unless this saga goes into one of the above-mentioned areas, I think it tarnishes him but doesn’t really afffect his public life.

Further, I really like that he shot back at the media mongrels who are demanding more information and confessionals. Tough. If you want information, go dig it out. He owes you absolutely nothing.

As the Tiger Woods car accident story was becoming known and starting to be covered in the media, my other half passed along an article talking about “what Tiger should do,” and suggesting that I weigh in. In the moment, I have to say that I had a hard time forming a strategy, partly due to Thanksgiving overload and partly because I was at a loss as to what I would recommend.

In the meantime, on Sunday, Tiger released a statement that, I thought, hit all the right notes.

Here’s the statement:

As you all know, I had a single-car accident earlier this week, and sustained some injuries. I have some cuts, bruising and right now I’m pretty sore.

This situation is my fault, and it’s obviously embarrassing to my family and me. I’m human and I’m not perfect. I will certainly make sure this doesn’t happen again.

This is a private matter and I want to keep it that way. Although I understand there is curiosity, the many false, unfounded and malicious rumors that are currently circulating about my family and me are irresponsible.

The only person responsible for the accident is me. My wife, Elin, acted courageously when she saw I was hurt and in trouble. She was the first person to help me. Any other assertion is absolutely false.

This incident has been stressful and very difficult for Elin, our family and me. I appreciate all the concern and well wishes that we have received. But, I would also ask for some understanding that my family and I deserve some privacy no matter how intrusive some people can be.

Here’s what I like about the statement and the strategy it implies:

1. He gives some helpful details at the beginning
2. He shifts the story back to its core — a single-car accident, mostly on private property, minor injuries, my fault. He went on the offense instead of playing defense.
3. He clearly states and repeats that he wants his privacy, as would any of us, famous or not, in such a case involving a minor accident.
4. He praises his wife, signaling a united front with her.

The fact is, none of us — the general public, his fans, the police or the media — really needs more information about this situation. I think the police acted irresponsibly in showing up at his house twice for an interview, thereby giving TV a fresh shot to air, when they could have called on the phone and been told whether or not he would speak to them. It looked to me like the cops were seeing this case as a possible gravy train rather than focusing on doing their jobs.

Is Tiger having an affair? Was his wife whacking him with a golf club as he ran out of the house and jumped in his car? Who knows? If you care, go to TMZ.com and get your fill.

Here’s a blessedly sane media story with the headline “Tiger doesn’t owe us an explanation.”

Generally speaking, it’s a bad sign when your PR strategy becomes the story, rather than the messages you are trying to send.

And so it was today, when the New York Times ran five nearly identical pictures on its front page of Obama giving health care reform interviews on five Sunday talk shows, accompanying a story about the PR strategy. This follows other recent stories about Obama’s PR offensive, which once again obscures any messages he is trying to get across.

The New York Times cleverly pointed out [and showed in pictures] that Obama didn’t even move from his seat for the interviews, which were obviously done back-to-back in a fancy White House room. The same backdrop, down the potted plant, appears in all the pictures. Can’t you guys even get that right?

This isn’t like those Hollywood star interviews, where the out-of-town reporters all get five minutes with the star hyping a new movie. In those cases, the poster for the movie is always the background — get it? In this case, maybe you could have held the interviews in the White House health clinic at least. Sheesh.

I continue to be amazed at how poorly the Obama communications team has handled the health care reform issue. They let the opposition build up steam and credibility, while doing a poor job building their own momentum and credibility. Granted, the president has communications tools that far outstrip the opposition, so they can still rally from behind, but to me as a comms professional, the message I get is this: they’re amateurs.

I’ve been planning an upgrade of the TV set-up in my house, and have started to research the options. It is almost a full-time job.

On the hardware side, the options are pretty straight forward — HD or not, 720 or 1080, LCD (cheaper) or LED (much more expensive).

But on the content side — that’s another story. And not just which channels to get — it’s how to get them. You can get free TV (digital signal only), all sorts of cable packages, all sorts of satellite packages, and even TV from the phone company. If you have AT&T phone service, then the phone company’s offering is called U-verse.

But what, exactly, is U-verse?

I was intrigued by U-verse and so decided to research it to see if it was right for us. First, I went into an AT&T store in the neighborhood. Bad idea. Take a number, have a seat, and wait your turn to have a sales rep (who’s handling everything from iPhone to Blackberry to U-verse) talk to you. OK, I’ll call AT&T and surf the web.

At this point, I still didn’t know what U-verse was. With the other options, it’s pretty obvious — it’s in the name. But U-verse is some made up corporate brand, and it’s not like there’s a generic category that’s obvious.

Finally, when I reached a rep on the phone, I got the basics: it’s a fiber-optic signal that comes to a box in your house and then that box distributes the signal wirelessly to boxes attached to your TVs, using Internet Protocol, or IP.

Wow — wireless IPTV. Very modern.

But I wondered — how’s the signal? How’s the picture? How do people like it?

Again, it was a research project. It took a few attempts at phrasing my question to Google before typing in “quality of U-verse service” and getting some answers. The basic answer: it’s OK, not great. And it’s complicated to set up.

So there you have the answer to “what the heck is U-verse?” But my questions for AT&T are just starting: such as, why isn’t it obvious in your materials how the technology works? How come I can’t see a demo of a typical installation? Why haven’t you attempted to allay my concerns about how a wireless signal is going to travel around my two-story house? (I’m not the only target customer who lives in one, you know)

So I decided to write a blog post about this because this is not as much a technology problem as a marketing communications problem.

Bottom line: I’m probably going to stay away from U-verse because of these unanswered questions and stick with a better understood alternative, either cable or satellite.

I’m stunned by the amateur approach of Obama and his White House team to the PR aspects of health care insurance reform. While the opponents of the plan have done a masterful job of ginning up opposition to change, the White House has been caught napping and clueless.

I kept waiting to see if the Obama team was just waiting for the right time to roll out its effort, but now that the news is that the White House is “firing back” at critics, it’s obvious that they went to Plan B because they didn’t have a Plan A.

Where, for example, is the Mile High Stadium version of a health care reform rally?

Where are the heart-rending stories from ordinary citizens who will be helped by the plan?

Where is the demonization of the huge interests who are opposed to reform?

Where is the one-pager that describes to the average citizen what the benefits of the plan are?

Why is it that even I, an informed and highly educated citizen, can’t tell you a thing about what’s in it for me and my family?

This last point is the reason why these wingnut shouters at Congressional town hall meetings are having so much success — because the absence of a common understand of “what’s in it for me” has created a vacuum and an opportunity to create a fear of “what I have to lose.”

It’s too late now to fundamentally change the game. The best the Obama people and supporters of reform can hope for is that the screamers will hit the limit of their effectiveness and that the Democratic majorities in Congress will deliver an acceptable reform bill.

Back from Vegas, where the famously in-touch Vegas taxi drivers were 100% against Obama’s health care plan. Why? Who the hell knows. Probably because the right wingnuts on talk radio are tearing it down.

But there’s a serious grain of reality in these man-on-the-street insights. Eight months ago, Obama’s PR machine had created a feel-good climate in which you would not have heard a Vegas taxi driver disparaging the President-elect. Now, everyone’s a critic. Why? Because, in my opinion, the Obama people haven’t done as good a PR job as they could and should selling this health care plan to the American people.

This should be a no-brainer — the facts are on their side. But Obama seems unable to close the deal. In this case, he seems incapable of clearly articulating in plain, clear and compelling lanugage how this plan will reform the health care system so more Americans get better and cheaper care.

I’m not clear on the politics of the situation — maybe he knows that the Democratic majorities will give him a good enough bill to sign and so he doesn’t need public opinion to be on his side. But I can’t see where appearing weak and defensive on this critical issue could serve either his current cause or future causes.

Maybe the guy is human after all.

I was out on holiday for most of last week and so missed the opportunity to offer some timely insights into the glorious coverage of Silicon Valley PR in the New York Times on Saturday, July 4 (an aside — why does our industry get coverage only on national holidays and other B-list days?).

Young Times tech reporter Claire Cain Miller discovered the latest it-girl in Sili Valley PR, Brooke Hammerling, who, the story asserts, is at the forefront of a new trend because she is as keen on pitching influential bloggers and other industry leaders as she is on pitching the professional journalists in the mainstream media.

Holy Reporter’s Notebook, Batman — stop the digital presses!

Among Miller’s other “findings” in this 3,000-word stemwinder:

• That Ms. Hammerling is, among other things, obsequious to a fault, folding her strategic tent at the merest assertion of a different idea from her A-list client
• “In the new world of social media, P.R. people must know hundreds of writers, bloggers and Twitter users instead of having six top reporters on speed dial.”
• “Despite all these new channels, it’s still essential to know which mainstream publications to approach. If a start-up is seeking venture funding or new engineers … PR still looks to The San Jose Mercury News, VentureWire or TechCrunch to get the word out.”
• “She drops names like a boat anchor, so shamelessly, but at the same time, it’s, ‘Larry, Larry,’ and I think she’s lying and then I get on the phone and it’s Larry Ellison. She got him on the cellphone; I didn’t,” says a journalist who did not want to be identified.

OK — enough having fun at Miller and Hammerling’s expense. What are my takeaways? Read more

One of the most important lessons of crisis communications is that most crises are not communications problems, they’re operational problems. Communications can help in many ways to diffuse a crisis and calm people down, but if the operational issue at the heart of the problem isn’t addressed, no amount of PR spin is going to distract interested parties from that fact.

This, is a nutshell, is my fan-level reaction to Ticketmaster‘s new PR ploy involving its captive reseller program, TicketsNow. Ticketmaster had a big problem earlier this year when it was caught transferring ticket seekers from the original ticket onsale screen to the TicketsNow resale screen, where the same tickets that had just gone on sale were now supposedly only available for huge markups on TicketsNow. Read more