Watson's Fairytale

Before the 'not another blog on Tom Watson' comments come in, I'm more concerned with the media's portrayal of this weekends open championship and how they help to build expectations for the 'fairytale' story.

Now it was never really meant to happen. Once you get over a certain age, your swing starts to deteriorate and apparently it becomes increasingly difficult to hold your nerve and focus. Well this weekend went against all that. Tom Watson did do tremendously well against the odds. What was even more interesting to watch was the crowd's eagerness to see Tom succeed and the support they gave him during the play-off with Stewart Cink. It was the determination of the crowd to see a fairytale ending that really enthralled me as a viewer. When Tom played poor shot after poor shot in the play off and as the crowd realised they were not getting the fairytale story they had hoped for, the atmosphere went sour. Its an interesting facet of human thought to promote the underdog and achieve a fairytale story.

Surely the fairytale could be used for brands? Now I'm not talking about brands telling a fairytale story through their advertising but instead the story of the brand itself. Creating a brand based on the human desire for fantasy. How the brand has come from the unexpected to victory. Now obviously there are many other elements to make this succeed including a half decent product but it seems as though the foundations are there for people to encourage fairytale brands.

In order to see how much various media outlets had used the fairytale element to Tom Watson's open championship I carried out a simple search for 'Tom Watson fairytale' of which the results can be seen below.