Source: Nike The Nike ad featuring Tiger Woods

No one does advertising like Nike

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[NKE  Loading...      ()   ] and the company proved it again yesterday when the Tiger ad it unveiled was a spot that not a single company in the world besides them would dare to do.

Take the voice of Tiger’s late father, Earl, who died in 2006, asking Tiger what he did and what he learned, with Woods staring straight into the camera.

My Twitter account was flooded with extremely polarized responses.

The positive included comments like “gutsy move,” “Nike strikes again” and “brilliant ad.” The negative? “Creepy,” “depressing,” and “scandal becomes marketing campaign (vomit!)”

In the first 12 hours, the official YouTube link received more than 400,000 views and the spot has been covered as news all over the world. The "Today Show" this morning devoted a full segment to the spot. A poll on Yahoo about the spot generated 110,000 responses (63 percent positive). TMZ's poll yielded 62,000 votes (76 percent negative).

In fact, I think out of all the Tiger ads Nike has done, this ad has already come close to receiving as much buzz as the spot when Woods dribbles the ball off his club.

I’m more on the positive side on this one.

Why?

Because it creates discourse.

How many ads these days do we really debate the merits of, the ethics of?

Not many.

And at the end of the day, could this really hurt Nike? No way. No one who had intentions to potentially buy Nike product is saying today that they’re changing brands.

You know what would hurt Nike sales more? If Tiger misses the cut this week and takes a while getting back to his old game.

Questions?  Comments?