“I want to find out what your thinking was; I want to find out what your feelings are, and did you learn anything?” Woods' father's voice asks as his son looks into the camera in silence. The black-and-white advertisement was created by advertising agency Wieden + Kennedy.
The ad has produced a polarised response from the public and sports marketers. Bloomberg reports that 63 per cent of 166,000 voters in a poll by Yahoo liked it, but 77 per cent of 91,000 voters in a similar poll on celebrity website TMZ thought it was “PR BS”.
Michael Fanuele, chief strategy officer with Euro RSCG New York, part of advertising firm Havas SA, said: “Nike is a brand that has always championed virtue, the strength, the heroism of athletes, and I think this is a contradiction of that legacy. You might say it's off brand.”
Brad Adgate, senior vice president at Horizon Media, another advertising firm, said the number of people that had watched the advertisement online – at 700,000 the day after it was first broadcast on television – meant the spot is already a success in marketing terms.
