Tiger Woods' recent personal difficulties point out the problem when companies tie themselves closely to a celebrity endorser. What happens when that person -- who is, after all, just a person and not perfect -- does wrong, and tarnishes your brand in the process? In the case of Tiger Woods, Accenture has quickly dropped him (he's "no longer the right representative" after the "circumstances of the last two weeks."), Gatorade has dropped its Tiger Focus brand beverage, and Gillette is phasing him out. You've got to imagine that most of his other sponsors are giving the idea of dropping him serious consideration.

A brand, after all, is a living symbol of the trust that businesses build with their customers. People buy Tide instead of All or Purex because they believe in the brand -- they trust Tide to do the best job possible for their clothes, to leave them clean and fresh-smelling every time they do the wash. When an endorser like Tiger messes up in a very public way, the trust that a company has built with its customers -- often taking years or even decades to build -- can be damaged, perhaps permanently. When this happens, customers start looking for a new brand to trust.

If you have sponsorship deals with celebrities (or anyone else, for that matter), it's important to first of all be very careful that the people you select to represent your company are acting in public in a way that is consistent with your brand and your company's values and culture. And if they aren't, then you should take immediate action to remove them from their sponsorship deals. It only takes a minute for the brand image that you and your colleagues have devoted so much time and energy and resources to develop to be damaged, but it can take years to rebuild that image in the eyes of your customers.

When endorsements go bad, there's not a minute to waste.