Earlier this week, Nike brushed off the fact that Tiger Woods came back to the Masters wearing FootJoy spikes. They said they were committed to Tiger being comfortable and would work with him to find a solution.
And even though Tiger faded, there was a real tangible brand halo loss for the shoe and apparel giant.
Sponsorship evaluation firm Apex Marketing said that if Nike swooshes were on Woods’ spikes this week, the brand would have garnered the equivalent of $3.2 million in advertising value.
Swooshes could have been painted and orthotic could have been put in a Nike shoe to perfectly fit Tiger earlier in the process when they knew that walking was going to be an issue.
Yes, Woods was wearing swooshes elsewhere, but shoes have always been and always will be the core of Nike's business.
The fact that Woods didn’t cover the FootJoy logos — though, there was some benefit for Nike in that they were much harder to see — and that there was much talk about them in the news, led the FJ brand to nearly $10 million in equivalent advertising.
"What Tiger Woods means to golf and the enormous physical challenges that he overcame to play the Masters translated into an increase in coverage before and during every step he took at Augusta. FootJoy reaped the rewards from the exposure and Nike failed to capitalize on Tiger’s comeback event,” said Apex Marketing’s Eric Smallwood.
In 1992 — in the months leading up to Olympics — Reebok famously advertised the epic battle for the gold in Barcelona — Dan O’Brien vs. Dave Johnson. It was a $25 million marketing campaign. Reebok had an issue when Dan didn’t qualify for the games, and the campaign was over.
The eventual winner of the Olympic decathlon? Robert Zmelik of Czechoslovakia, who happened to be sponsored by Reebok. Unfortunately, not a single ad was ever made for him.
We bring this up because the man who won the Masters, Scottie Scheffler, not only wore Nike from head-to-toe, but he wore Tiger's signature shoes with the "TW" logo on the back.
As for the shoes he wore — the Tiger ‘20 models — they were only available in three sizes on Sunday.
More than an hour after Scheffler won, the Nike website had an ad for the guy who didn’t even wear their shoes.
