2009 was a rough year for marketers. Budgets were cut, heads rolled, and projects came under tighter scrutiny than ever before. So, in such a high-stakes climate, mistakes and missteps  would be few and far between, right? Not so. The following awkward, painful, bizarre, and embarrassing marketing blunders show that even with the odds stacked against them, marketers both big and small will dare to dream the impossible dream (and pay the price in the end).

[10] Chevy Volt Dance

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Embarrassing? Check. Awkward? Check. Painful? Check. Bizarre? Check And lucky for us, this was released before 2009 was up, so it makes the list.

Perhaps Autoextremist Peter D. Lorenzo put it best: A job qualification for GM’s new CEO would be “…somebody who would would fire everyone directly responsible for the ‘Chevy Volt Dance’ and even more important, understand the reasons why it never should have seen the light of day.”

GM killed the EV1, its ground-breaking electric car, with sheer marketing ineptitude in 1999. In 2009 GM did its best to abort its ground-breaking serial hybrid, the Volt, with this bit of marketing ineptitude.

[9] Windows 7 Launch Party

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How to make an OS launch like a Tupperware party: a warm, fuzzy, diverse, and welcoming Tupperware party…

This is for those who thought that Gates and Co. could only move up after the company’s $300 million dud of an ad camapaign last year. Remember that campaign? It co-starred comedian Jerry Seinfeld and the man himself, Bill Gates, in a 90-second TV spot beginning in a shoe store and ending with the promise of a “delicious” future.

2009 delivered that future in the form of a Windows 7 launch campaign that, despite taking place in a kitchen, was anything but delicious.

[8] GM Reinvention (and its various spoofs):

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USA! USA! Um… not so much. Here we have GM bouncing back from federally mandated bankruptcy restructuring with a message to the American people, its new owners.

And that message apparently had something to do with amputees and butterflies, but beyond that, we’re a little hazy on the details.

[7] Chia Obama

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Really? The 2008 commemorative plate was too stuffy for you? Maybe you bought one and liked it, but just didn’t feel like it gave you enough Obama pride to carry you through 2009?

Well, our perennial friends at chi-chi-chi-chia came up with the answer in 2009, and boy did they hit this one out of the park.

[6] PETA Pet Shop Boys Name Change Request

Shoot for the stars, end up in the circular file.

While the Pet Shop Boys may have had a popular song (“I Want a Dog”), PETA, as is often the case, wasn’t satsified. In a bold attempt at rebranding by proxy, PETA made a teeny, weeny request of the boys. The result? Lots of free publicity for PETA, but not a whole lot of feel-good credibility to go along with it.

[5] Whole Foods CEO on Single Payer Healthcare Reform

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This is Tendo strategy 101: Take the time to understand your audience. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey let all those commie, leftie, pinko Prius-driving shoppers of his know just where he stood on single payer healthcare reform, and the results that followed did not spur a rush to buy organic humus or premium, extra-firm tofu.

At least we give him props for taking a stand on something, speaking his mind, and being transparent about his beliefs–and frankly, that counts for a lot (and it kept him off the bottom of our list, despite the magnitude of this blunder).

(4) Visit Denmark, Conceive a Child

What better way to woo travelers to visit the Scandanavian land of fair-haired maidens than the promise of a one-night stand and a cute, illegitimate love child as a souvenir?

Tendo covered this in our blog when it first came out (that’s right, you read it here first), but the upshot is the Danish tourism board thought a suberversive viral featuring an attractive mother looking for the father of her baby was the hot ticket to encourage tourism to Denmark. Points for thinking outside of the box here, but…

[3] The Shake Weight

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‘Nuff said.

[2] Amazon Deletes 1984 from Kindle

George Orwell predicted it. In what can only be called the consummate product marketing debacle of 2009, Amazon went Big Brother on its Kindle users–literally–by surreptitiously deleting what they believed to be unauthorized copies of Orwell’s classics, 1984 and Animal Farm, from their Kindle devices. This heaping bowl of “not good” had all the irony of, um, something with a lot of irony.

[1] Balloon Boy

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When promoting your reality show concept gets away from you, as it were.

Robert Thomas, a Colorado State University student and paid assistant to Balloon Boy’s dad, Richard Heene, revealed the high-flying scare that captured worldwide attention to be a misguided, guerilla-style publicty stunt to promote Heene’s reality show pitch. According to CNN, “Thomas said that at one point they were talking about the Roswell UFO incident of the late 1940s when Heene said it would be easy to cook up a media stunt that would be equally profound as Roswell–and we could do so with nothing more than a weather balloon and some controversy.’”

These two actions demonstrate the president’s commitment to transparency and accessibility, and highlight some differences between the Bush and Obama administrations. They also illustrate how the conversation between the government and the public is shifting, which reflects a trend in the corporate marketing world, too: We’re all tired of spin, and we can sniff it out with increasing ease. Trust is at a premium.

The old way, both in government and marketing, was a monologue–a stream of messages that spun the truth and interrupted our lives. The new approach is a dialogue in which consumers have more choice and can dismiss anything that smacks of a sales pitch. In a world in which conversational marketing trumps traditional marketing, what do corporate marketers need to know? Here are five things to keep in mind:

Interruption marketing is dead.

Just as DVRs allow us to watch TV shows when we want to watch them, we also buy things when we need them. Sure, we may need a reminder once in a while (say, in the form of an enticing email newsletter), but those reminders need to provide more than just coupons. As Joe Pulizzi explains in his book, Get Content. Get Customers., “Content marketing is about getting customers to invite you to interact with them. It’s about creating relationships that transcend transactions.” He cites as an example the viral videos on willitblend.com that drove up sales 400 percent in one year. These were not straightforward videos rattling off the merits of Blendtec products; instead, they were hilarious spots that you wanted to pass along to your friends.

Your customers are talking to each other about you.

Whether or not you join the conversation, it’s definitely happening online. Customers trust other customers’ opinions more than they trust your marketing message. MediaPost noted, for instance, that in 1977, 67 percent of people surveyed said they were motivated to take some sort of action because of “word-of-mouth” influence. By 2003 that number was 92 percent. The 2008 Edelman Trust Barometer indicated that 58 percent of respondents believe what “a person like me” says about an organization is a more credible source of company or product information than the company itself (or its product advertising). Joining the conversation by providing information of value will help you gain trust; joining it with spin, messaging, or a sales pitch will get you ignored.

Talk authentically and offer value.

At its core, conversational marketing is about forgoing jargon and company-speak and talking in a real voice that your customers can relate to and trust; this form of marketing offers useful information so that both parties benefit from the relationship. Last month I joined a webinar on social media and one auto executive on the call discussed a recent experience. He had engaged in an online dialogue with a woman whose son was paralyzed after an accident in one of his company’s vehicles. While he knew he wasn’t going to change her mind about the car, he treated her with respect, got more information about her situation, and listened. He cared enough to have a dialogue with her rather than defend his product, and that kind of message gets passed along. In addition to approaching conversations with authenticity, corporate marketers need to deliver content of value (and content that speaks to their customers’ needs) to gain the attention and trust of their audience. I might be interested in a hybrid car, but if the difference between Honda and Toyota is that the Honda website offers articles on the mechanics of hybrid technology, why maintenance matters, and case studies that tell me more about the customer experience, I’d gain more from a relationship with Honda than I would from a competitor that just tries to sell me.

Lose control to get a grip.

Marketers often have a hard time being conversational because it requires relinquishing some control over the message. But part of being successful at conversational marketing is allowing the conversation to develop a life of its own. This also separates the wheat from the chaff: If you don’t have a product or service worth selling, you can no longer hide (see point #2). That said, you don’t have to relinquish all control–consider blogs, for example. “Blogs represent the best chance for companies to inform the conversation,” said Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman Public Relations, on Technorati. Though a recent Forrester report acknowledged that only 16 percent of adults surveyed trust corporate blogs, I suspect the number would be higher if corporate blogs focused less on spin and more on facts. With a blog, you can connect directly to your customers, you get valuable feedback, and you can humanize your company. Sure, you can’t–and shouldn’t–control every posted comment, but by engaging in a real dialogue, you can build trust.

Marketing is not a numbers game anymore.

While traditional marketing focused on volume and eyeballs, conversational marketing focuses on the quality of your dialogue–and showing up for the dialogue in the first place. Whether you’re talking to 60 people who follow a specific blogger or a Twitter community, you have to pay attention. Find out what conversations are going on out there. You can start with a basic tool like Google Alerts to help you get clued in–and then figure out to what extent you’re going to get involved in the dialogue.

The bottom line is that engaging in a conversation with your customers requires you to rethink your entire approach to marketing, from outbound monologue to full engagement. Building trust requires you to offer information and content of value rather than a message that interrupts your customers on their way to finding what they want. If you spend more time understanding customer needs and interacting authentically, you’ll earn your audience’s trust. And today, trust drives preference and transactions.

The page is a great example of how technology doesn’t have to be fancy or complicated or packed with Flash to generate excitement. This is a clever, straightforward tool that capitalizes on the interest we all have in this historic election. And it shows, once again, the power of words. —Julie Jares, managing editor