Golden Ginko Tree - Wikimedia commons cc3.0

Japan's second-largest tourist agency was mystified when it entered English-speaking markets and began receiving requests for unusual sex tours. Upon finding out why, the owners of Kinki Nippon Tourist Company changed its name.

The saga of the Golden Tree travel agency was a memorable lesson in my college marketing class. As was the Chevy "Nova"'s entry into Latin-American markets ("No Va" means "doesn't go in Spanish). And Vicks cough syrup in Germany (Vicks is a dirty word there).

The lesson is simple: listen.

Ugly Sonic. Pic used under Fair Use Doctrine

How is it that companies put all the money and effort into building out a marketing strategy in a country and never think to talk to the people who live there and could easily warn them long before they created confusion (or offense)? It would be like a major movie studio taking a beloved video game character and creating a model of him that looked like a frumpy middle-aged resident of the deepest and most forgotten corner of the "uncanny valley" and then being surprised when there was severe public backlash.

It's honestly absurd and amateur to make these kinds of mistakes and each of them come from the same root cause: lack of a listening culture. You hire people because they're professionals at what they do so why wouldn't you listen to what they have to say? Why wouldn't you seek out their expertise before making a critical mistake that requires damage control from simple embarrassment to millions of dollars of wasted money?

Bottom line, companies are going to keep making these kinds of mistakes and we'll continue to laugh at them when they do, but if your goal is to be an effective and respected leader, not only hearing what your people are saying, but making proactive efforts to get their input is the basics of the basics. After all, how are you a leader if the only voice you hear is your own?

Unscrewed: The Consumer's Guide to Getting What You Paid For: Burley
(See online!)

This book is very similar to another of my favorites: How to Complain for Fun And Profit, but the difference is that the complain book is about getting resolution for being treated badly, bad customer service, or otherwise making a case for why a company should consider giving you a break/a pass/or exception.

Unscrewed is a lot more aggressive, but effective in situations where a company owes you something, but refuses to comply. It's not for the weak of heart, but it does give you techniques to get resolution quickly and effectively as long as you are willing to hold their feet to the fire.

For those who are resolute not to be taken advantage of, this is a must have.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

A depressing report from a few California universities shows that most people have no idea to what extent their online activities are tracked and used against them. This report doesn't offer any solutions other than to try to opt-out of tracking (if it's even possible to do so) though they also state that many companies find clever ways of circumventing promises not to track and do it anyway.

If you don't want to be tracked, make sure to use adblocking software and turn off images in your e-mail. This removes many of the techniques used to track you.

Hey there fellow kids. Who wants a PSP fur Realz?

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

In an amusing example of fake marketing, Sony created a fake website called "alliwantforchristmasisapsp" where two employees of their marketing firm pretended to be young, hip gamers who blogged about wanting a PSP.

According to the 1-up article on the debacle:

The tide began to turn against Sony's initiative after popular webcomic Penny-Arcade publicly outed the chicanery in a deliberate move to force a little transparency up ins. The Internet was quick to kick the

Marketing hiding as natural recommendations. Lovely.

(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

The Washington Post reports that the FTC has begun to crack down on false word-of-mouth advertising. This is where a company pays people to tell friends about their products. From the article:

As the practice has taken hold over the past several years, however, some advocacy groups have questioned whether marketers are using such tactics to dupe consumers into believing they are getting unbiased information.

Ya' think?

Marketing to kids on a school bus is about as Orwelian as it gets.

(Image is used under the Pixabay license)

Obligation Inc. is documenting the exploits of BusRadio, a company that is producing programming intended for play on school busses. From the Obligation.org page on the issue:

These men realize that once on a school bus, children are a captive audience. Any captive audience can be exploited by forcing them to hear advertising. So Steven Shulman and Michael Yanoff developed BusRadio and were greatly aided by the venture capital moneyman Robert Davoli of Sigma Partners. As far as I can tell, this is the first time Sigma has chosen to financially back a very controversial company.