• December 8, 2009

The good news for Tiger Woods is that by one measure of celebrity popularity, his rating is higher than before the scandal about his alleged numerous affairs. The bad news is that his rating increased mostly because of a surge in negative buzz.

According to Millward Brown, Woods' Cebra score rose to 76 (out of 100) last week from 70 back in September. The metric combines consumer ratings of familiarity (how much someone knows about a celebrity), affinity (how strongly one likes or dislikes a celebrity) and buzz (the cachet of a celebrity) to provide a Cebra (celebrity + brand) score.

So while Woods' familiarity score has risen from 68 to 74, his affinity figure fell from 69 to 59. The real reversal was seen in the explosion of negative buzz from 2 to 80, with positive buzz dwindling from 82 to 19.

"The average level of negative buzz for celebrities is 4%, which makes Tiger's current level of negative buzz at a massive 80% -- one of the very highest we have seen and comparable to Kanye West's scores at the height of his VMA/Taylor Swift scandal," said Graham Kerr, executive vice president of Millward Brown, in a statement.

But the research firm noted that there's little evidence so far that the scandal has affected his major brand sponsorships. So far, advertisers affiliated with Woods such as Nike and Gatorade have publicly stood by him. Still, Millward Brown warned that brands affiliated with the golfing great "should be sensitive to potential transfer of negative associations." --Mark Walsh