Coming Out of the WOOD(s)work

Maybe not tomorrow or next month, but right now if you go to the website for TLC vision, you will see Tiger Wood's smiling face, dressed up to play golf, and being quoted that he choose TLC for his vision correction and now he sees 20/20 without glasses.  While it is impressive that  LASIK has helped to make someone who had extremely bad vision (the advertisement says he was -11.00 which is really extreme) now have vision so good that he can be perhaps the best in the world, it was not really TLC that fixed his vision.  TLC is a company which is actually a corporation that began in Canada, and owns a chain of laser vision correction centers throughout North America.  One particular doctor, who happened to work at TLC did correct Tiger's eyes, and that does not mean that every one of the dozens of doctors who have done surgery at TLC would have been chosen by Tiger Woods nor does it mean that anyone else operating at TLC would have gotten the same results.  But this is not the real problem with celebrity endorsements.

The real problem is that unlike everyone else who has to pay for LASIK, Tiger was paid, and paid a lot to have his LASIK at TLC and to provide an endorsement.  This makes public a private matter that TLC corporation could use to promote their centers with him as their "spokesman".  He does not mention anything about this in his endorsement, and we are left to believe that he just wanted to let us know how happy he is because he is such a stand up guy and grateful for the results that have helped him to see so well and make so much money playing golf and thus allowing him the freedom to provide endorsements for other things, like Nike who pays him really big bucks.  We are not just buying the fact that he can now play golf so well after LASIK, we are buying that he selected TLC, that he has good sense to pick the best, and he can afford to go wherever he wants.  Now we know, he doesn't have to afford to go to TLC since they paid him, and he really does not have the personal integrity that makes us necessarily respect him.  His decision of where to go for LASIK and the "deal" related to his endorsement was probably formulated well before a laser ever touched his eyes. 

Likewise, in Denver, another LASIK center has another celebrity endorser, this time it is an ex-football player, John Elway.  Do you think that Mr. Elway paid ICON laser centers to have a procedure at their facility?    Is John Elway, who is a local football hero, a person of high personal  integrity who we can believe will tell us who to see for LASIK as a true reference or is he a person who will tell you what car to buy because he is associated with a car dealership with his name on it?  I respect John Elway both as an athlete and as a businessman.  I do not respect his paid endorsement of a laser center.  In this case I do not know if he is really paid, or how much, and if I am wrong and it is coincidence that his image is now on every ICON advertisement and their website, then I apologize.

One thing that ICON and TLC have in common is that they are both businesses owned or operated by people other than the folks who actually perform the vision correction surgery.  LASIK surgery is not something that can be packaged neatly and franchised like a hamburger.  When they said medicine is an art, they were not kidding.  It is in fact kind of like golf.  Think about it.  Every golfer has a similar set of clubs and they all play on the same course.  They even swing the clubs in a very similar manner.  Yet, some golfers are really good at consistently getting the ball where they want it to go and others are not quite so good.  Kind of like artists with a paint brush in their hands, some are masters, some are not.   Fortunately, doing LASIK is a little easier and more predictable than playing golf but here is my point.

Do not depend on the paid endorsement of anyone when making a choice about something as important as a medical procedure.  Ask for real references of actual patients who are not paid for their opinion and who were treated by a particular doctor and at a particular clinic, since the other personnel that work at a facility are also critically important to your success.  Even in franchises, everyone knows of some places are better than others.  Ask your own eye doctor about their opinion when it comes to LASIK as who they would go to or send their family members to and rely on these types of opinions as genuine. 

Unfortunately we as a society place certain people on a pedestal because we can be conditioned to believe that the intelligence, character, and judgment of an athlete or celebrity is flawless since they are the best of the best in some aspect of their lives.  While I am not saying in any way that Tiger Woods made a bad choice in going to the doctor and having the procedure that he did, I am saying that this should not translate into an overall endorsement for all of the people associated with choice, especially when he was paid to make that endorsement.  My personal opinion is that what Tiger Woods does in his personal life is his own business, and we the public should only be involved in what he does on the golf course.  The reason that there has been such a strong reaction to his dalliances is that most of the money he makes is based on his image, not his golf.  So when the image is tarnished, so are the products and services that he represents.  I am suggesting that even before his image was blemished we should take his and all other celebrity endorsements only for their true merit.