Note to Lance Armstrong – no matter
what you might personally believe, perception is most definitely
reality in the eyes of both the general public and especially
Corporate America. In case you have been living under a rock the past
few days, news and allegations recently surfaced that the seven-time
Tour de France winner actually was involved in the use of performance
enhancing drugs during the majority of his illustrious career. And
although at this point it is only speculation, several of Lance
Armstrong’s long-time corporate sponsors have simply stated in no
uncertain terms – ‘we just can’t take the risk of trusting you
Lance’.
Before we dive into calling Lance
Armstrong a liar or even worse label him as a cheater, let’s take a
little look back on how all this unfolded in the first place.
In June of this year, the U.S.
Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) formally charged (not sure how that works
because there were no criminal charges filed) Armstrong with having
used performance enhancing drugs during his seven-time Tour de France
domination between the years of 1999-2005. In August of 2012, the
USADA announced a life-time ban from any USADA certified competitions
including Marathons or any other sporting events Armstrong could
potentially enter. They also ‘officially’ (Again not sure they
have the authority to do this) strip Lance Armstrong of winning any
events in the past.
Lance has until Halloween to file any
protest against these official allegations. Maybe he’ll dress up as
a Needle and show up to court to contest these charges which have
cost him multi-million dollar endorsement deals with Nike,
Anheuser-Busch and Radio Shack in recent days. But, many people might
question why Lance Armstrong was targeted here when athletes like
Tiger Woods and Michael Vick still maintain the majority of their
endorsement deals after their notorious and questionable personal
behavior in the past.
In a word – it has everything to do
with trust.
Companies like Nike supported Tiger
Woods during his highly-publicized sexual addiction because Tiger
came out and stated that “I have a problem with sexual addiction.”
Although the majority of people across the country thought this was a
cop-out for cheating on his beautiful wife, Nike stood by their guy
because at least he admitted to making a mistake.
Armstrong has done nothing of such. In
fact – he’s flat out denied these charges until he and his lawyer
are blue in the face.
But, the opinion of the general public
is that Lance Armstrong is lying based on recent testimony by several
of his former teammates who have admitted to using PED’s during
their time with Lance. And if he is lying, that makes him somebody
that Corporate America can’t trust to represent their reliable
brands.
This has happened recently in the SSL
Certificate world when Symantec replaced the reliable Verisign
checkmark with the cheap and not-reliable Norton Secured Seal. This
caused a huge shift in consumer confidence of all Symantec products
and recently has caused them to back-pedal their decision and place
the Verisign Checkmark back on the websites of some of their larger
end customers like Walmart and Best Buy.
In short, Lance Armstrong is guilty of
only one thing – facing the truth and deceiving the public. History
has shown that if you make a mistake in life, and admit it; the world
is willing to give you a second chance – to an extent. And as a
result, the companies who have supported him for years simply can’t
trust him to represent their brands in a trustworthy manner. It’s a
sad state of affairs when a company or person betrays the trust of
the general public. And most of the time that trust is lost for good.
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