Tiger Woods Disappears From Accenture Web Site; Ads Pulled

Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Accenture Plc, the consulting company that built its marketing around Tiger Woods, removed him from its Web site yesterday. It also pulled print ads featuring the golfer, said a person with knowledge of the matter.

An image of Woods among cactuses, rotating this week on Accenture’s main page along with photographs of a skier and skaters, was no longer on display last night. Its sponsorship page excluded any mention of Woods and a search of the site for his name returned no results. Accenture pulled ads from more than one publication, said the person, who declined to name them and sought anonymity because the decision isn’t public.

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Accent on Embarrassing

This morning, a client asked for me to look at the Accenture website. I was shocked by what I found: Tiger Woods (or his body double?), lost in the cacti, confused and trapped. Meanwhile, beneath this pathetic image, the company's Twitter scroll features this particularly harrowing phrase: Failure to learn from mistakes. The irony! During the week Tiger Woods is found out to be at best a sex addict, Accenture shows him literally lost in the weeds - and even worse - lost in Accenture's weeds.

Aghast, I continued to read the Twitter scroll and discovered another ironic message, especially given that I am writing about the company's marketing missteps this morning:

Just shut up and listen? You no longer control the conversation about your company.

LOL! No kidding!