Читать книгу Hope’s Daughters - R. Wayne Willis - Страница 83

Whatever we think of Tiger Woods’s philandering and his public confession of guilt or Paula Dean’s public apology for using racial slurs, one thing on which we can agree is the one thing their business associates had foremost on their minds: “How is this performance going to affect the Tiger Woods (or Paula Dean) brand?”

Gatorade, AT&T, Nike and other companies once bet over $100 million annually that the Tiger Woods brand—greatest golfer in world history plus all-around nice guy—would make them more bucks.

Brand, when I was growing up, was something a cowboy put on a cow. Cowboys seared their unique mark into the hide of their property. Today the word refers to the image cultivated by a person or a business. The advertising industry aims to sear a brand (more than a product) into consumers’ brains. Tiger Woods’s business partners are hoping his confession will help pull his weakened brand out of the fire.

I was discussing Albert Schweitzer with a class of college seniors and used a sentence often spoken of Schweitzer: “He made his life his argument.” With three earned doctorates, Schweitzer decided that instead of spending his life ensconced in a European university talking up Christian love and service, he would give his life to putting into practice love and service as a jungle doctor in Africa.

One student in my class had an epiphany that she put in writing and gave to me: “Schweitzer definitely has caused me to wonder whether or not I am making my life my argument. It’s also made me wonder what my argument really is.”

Each one of us—whether we are aware of it or not—is building a brand. Our life is an argument for something. A sobering question is, to quote one tenderhearted college senior, “what my argument really is.”